Blue Mountains

Happy April Fool's day!

First off all posts are 100% accurate - no April Fool's in this blog, I'm a serious guy. In any case I'm writing this the next day.

Got the train to Katoomba, a town next to the Blue Mountains about 2h away from Sydney. As we want to take it easy we are staying the night here and returning tomorrow. We also want to do it independently and avoid the day tours. The Blue Mountains derive their name from the blue tinge caused by the scattering of sunlight by particles in the atmosphere, especially the oils that evaporate from the eucalyptus trees. Since there are eucalyptus trees all over Australia I don't quite know why this effect doesn't happen everywhere on the continent.

Kattomba is a nice mountain town right next to some of the most famous sites. We got 2-day tickets for the hop-on, hop-off bus (a replica of the old trolley buses) that goes round the area. Got off at Gordon Falls (we decided to skip both the teapot museum, which sounds fascinating, and the toy and railway museum), had a picnic in front of the immense valley covered in trees, and walked about an hour and a half to Leura Cascade. The kids were a bit tired and a bus had just arrived so we didn't explore this bit and hopped on for a bit of playtime at the hostel. Passed by a pharmacy for a bit of lice cream - let's see if we can rid this family of them now we are out of Southeast Asia (there it's common to see people delousing each others hair everywhere you go).