Blue Mountains

The first and the last stop in Australia was Sydney. It is such an amazing city that it needed double time. This second time we focused on the performing arts. We enjoyed the Symphony Orchestra at the Opera House and the musical Wicked on its opening Saturday night performance. Both fantastic in their own different ways.

We also took a day to drive to the Blue Mountains just ~100km outside of town. This is another place where the views we saw were just as perfect as the ones on the postcards. With a rented car we drove out of Sydney and stopped at several towns in the mountains: Wentworth Falls (the falls are very tall, but had little water), Leura (nice outdoors lunch, flowers in bloom, and beautiful view from Sublime Point), Katoomba (picture-perfect Echo Point overlooking Three Sisters, a rock formation shaped like three towers), and Blackheath (Pulpit Rock, Perry's lookdown, and the top of Anvil Rock). So we managed to look at several valleys from different perspectives. They all had something in common: looking at the horizon, the mountains and forests were covered in a blueish haze, caused by the abundant eucalyptus trees. That explains the name "Blue Mountains".

The most fun part of the day was at the Scenic World near Katoomba, where we went from the top of the cliff to the bottom of the valley on an 1880s railway that descends at a 52-degree incline, the steepest train in the world. We couldn't believe that the train went down so sharply. Truly amazing. At the floor of the valley there were a series of boardwalks where we enjoyed a short hike before taking a cablecar back up the mountain.

Goodbye, Australia. Hello, New Zealand.
Mercedes