Sydney, Blue Mountains, and Hunter Valley

Here we go. It's been a long time since I've done a blog, but now we've been up to lots and it's go time. The week from Christmas to New Years was spent in Sydney to take in the celebrations and visit the icon of this country. Originally our plan was to hop in the Rav4 and take a drive down to Townsville where we booked our flights from. It was way cheaper to do it that way so we did it. Turns out this year is the year of massive floods in Australia, so the road to Townsville was cut off the day before we had to leave. We quickly booked a flight from Cairns to Townsville and all was well.

So Christmas morning we fly to Townsville then fly to Sydney. Exciting, as we fly in we could see the Opera House and the Harbour Bridge. Once we landed we hopped on the train and zipped off to the hotel. It was nicer than I was expecting. It was pretty much the cheapest place I could find in Sydney outside of the hostels which were all booked. Good to go, right on the edge of Darling Harbour. I send Don some messages on how to get to the hotel so that we could find each other the next day. For Christmas dinner me and Tara went for Thai food. I ordered a plate that came with full mini octopus and some oysters with all the guts inside. I didn't like it (and couldn't eat it). Moving on.

Don came in the next morning. We successfully met him at the train station with just a little delay. Then we walked back to the hotel. I can't be sure, but I think we just walked around and had some food. Most of what we did in Sydney was walk around. We walked around Darling Harbour a bunch and walked to Circular Quay several times. We also had a nice supper with Carina and Corey Friesen. We saw a lot of markets and took lots of good pictures, like this one.

Typical picture eh. I have nicer ones, but this was just too typical I had to post it. We walked around a lot and just soaked in the city. One of our final days we went to the Maritime Museum. It was free to walk around the museum but you had to pay 20 bucks to go on the submarine and the destroyer. The museum was monstrous. We spend the day there and didn't see everything. The destroyer was cool but the submarine was awesome.

The morning of the 28th we walked down to the car hire and picked up a car for the next three days. It was a bit more than we had expected, but in the end I wouldn't have done it differently. We then drove back to the hotel and loaded up our bags and checked out. We also made arrangements with the concierge to hold our bags for us on New Years Day while we hang out around the fireworks. We turned on the GPS and headed west to the Blue Mountains. We had looked up a room in the town of Katoomba that looked alright. We got there and booked the room, it was rather sketchy. We carried on to look at the sights. The weather was dreary.

We went to the main tourist attraction to look at the Three Sisters, below.

There's only one way to describe it, disappointing. It's just three piles of rock. I don't understand why thousands of people flock here to see this. So it goes. Then we got back in the car and went for some scenic driving. We ended up in another town called Mount Victoria where we were going to go to an old hotel for supper. While we were there we saw that they have rooms also, turns out it's way nicer and 34 dollars cheaper. So we went back to Katoomba and I got out money back, so we stayed in Mount Victoria instead.

After a nice night and complementary breakfast we packed up and drove to Wentworth Falls. Here we hiked the National Pass walk which ended up taking us a long time, but it was gorgeous. This walk made up for any disappointment in the Three Sisters. All three of us were absolutely amazed. Here's a picture of the actual falls. The rest of the pictures from now on are from Don's camera, some from Don and some from me. I forgot the charger to my camera.

Pictures won't do this justice. There is just no way. The walk is just so crazy. After we finished walking around we grabbed a lunch at the cafe and piled back into the car. The next stop was wine country in the Hunter Valley.

It took about 3 hours to make it there, almost directly north of Sydney. It was later in the day so we just grabbed a hotel quickly. It was nice, but awkward because I hold the guy we only had 2 people when we had three. I don't like it that they charge extra for not getting anything. But I think he saw us walk in so it was odd. No worries though, it all worked.

The morning of the 30th we spent the day touring around wine country. Driving from one winery to the other just to sip on wine. Some of the places were sort of snotty and we didn't get a great vibe. But one place was very open and friendly and had the best wine. All three of us agreed that we preferred their wine. We bought a couple of bottles of our favorites and carried on. We also went for a nice supper at the Potters Brewery where we did some beer tasting as well. It was a really cool place that I'd love to go back to. Look how tasty these beers look.

Since we needed to drop our rental off at 10 am we decided to stay the night somewhere closer to the city. We drove down the beautiful coastal road and stopped along a nice beach to relax and watch some people do some surf fishing. It looked like fun.

We tried to get a hotel in a place called The Entrance. It's where there is this big tidal inlet and there were tons of people fishing and having fun. But it was booked. We travelled a little farther towards Sydney to the town of Gosford where we got a room to stay the last night. We all got a good sleep for the next day and set off early in the morning. Perfect scheduling meant that we got to the hotel to drop off our bags, then take the car to the rental garage exactly at 10 am, perfect. Now our bags are safely stowed away and the rental car is gone. We're free to talk around enjoy New Years Eve in Sydney.

We started off by walking to a cool little cafe that we went to one of the earlier days. It was so great that we wanted to go back again. We had some breakfast and coffee and relaxed. Then we hoofed it over to Circular Quay and hopped the ferry to Toronga Zoo. We didn't get as much time at the zoo as we would have liked, but everything was shutting down early because of the fireworks prep. We saw lots of cool animals including these awesome giraffes and zebras.

Then we floated back on the ferry to the city to sort out our day waiting for fireworks. Don asked an info booth where we should go. We got directed to this area that is open to the public for viewing so that's where we went. It was 3 in the afternoon when we got in there and it was already crazy busy. We found a spot and settled in. It was hot, a little over 30 I imagine and not a cloud in the sky. We were roasting, sitting on a little patch of grass sweating like crazy. We sat there for the next 9 hours waiting for the fireworks. Then it happened. The Sydney New Years Eve fireworks and we were there to watch them. It was amazing. It also turns out that we didn't have the greatest view of the most of the fireworks, but we had a perfect view of the bridge. Not to mention, the greatest thing was just being there. I was a great moment. In the buildup to the fireworks I also played around with the long exposure, makes for some neat colours.

Then the 1.5 million people around the harbour started flowing into the streets. Wow. We sort of just walked with the mob and saw some crazy stuff. Very drunk sick people in the streets and some fun looking parties. We ended up back at our hotel where we picked up our bags. The we found out that cars are not allowed that close to the harbour at that time. So we had to walk through the crowds of crazies until we finally reached a street that had cars. We grabbed a taxi to the airport.

Unfortunately when we got to the airport we found out that it's not even open until 4 am. So we had a couple of hours to sleep on the sidewalk in front of the terminal. It wasn't that odd though, there were lots of sleepers. Then eventually they let us in the terminal where we cleaned up a bit in the washroom before going back to sleep in the terminal. A long time later our flight came up and we zipped off to Townsville. We rented a car and drove the last bit up to Ciarns. We were exhausted. A fun and happy trip to Sydney, the Blue Mountains, Hunter Valley and the wonderful Sydney Harbour fireworks. Beautiful.

I will post again with the fun we've been up to in Cairns since getting back. But you'll have to wait for that.

Nick