21st Birthday at the Blue Mountains (Part 1)

Get ready for a long post and lots of pictures!!

At 7:45am, I had everything packed up and ready to go to my friend Sam’s. I put my backpack on, got my suitcase out the door and carried 2 other bags filled with some stuff and headed up the hill. Boy was that a workout…I was sweating so much once I made it to the top of the hill and to my friend’s place. I had to stop a few times on the way up to readjust stuff. I made it and with my friend’s help we carried my suitcase up to the 3^rd floor. Then I ran back down the hill to get some breakfast. It was amazing to see so many people at breakfast at 8am this morning, but everyone had to leave pretty early, since we had to be out by 10.

From there, I got my bag and purse for the day from my room and said goodbye for 2 weeks. I turned in my key and headed to the train station. I was meeting Jenny at another stop, so I got my ticket to the Blue Mountains and didn’t have to wait too long before my train arrived.

I arrived at the first train stop and waited for Jenny to arrive. Then we headed to Strasfield and switched trains to Katoomba (where the Blue Mountains are). The train to Katoomba was 2 hrs and our car was filled with a bunch of teenage girls who looked like they were headed camping for the weekend. Sometimes it was fun to watch them being goofy with their friends.

We finally made it to the Blue Mountains and we decided to buy a ticket for the Hop on, Hop off Bus with some rides as well through the mountains as it was a pretty good deal and I don’t think I’ll have another time to head back there before I leave, so I wanted to get the most of it.

The first stop we off at was the Scenic Skyway. I got some beautiful pictures as we went across the mountains. There was also a clear floor on the skyway which was quite cool and we had a great view of a waterfall.

clear floor flying over the trees

riding the skyway

steepest railway

After getting off the skyway, we took the steepest railway in the world down. It’s in the Guinness world record book. That was really cool to get to ride. 

steepest railway

This railway was originally used to get down to the mine. Once we went down, we took a walk around, following the boardwalk at first and learning more about the coal mining and then veered off onto a dirt path that we walked for a while. We had no idea what path we were on for a while and then we ended up turning around because we knew we didn’t have time to spend walking the entire trail and I wanted to see some other stuff.