March 4, 2013 Blue Mountains & Sydney, Australia

FJ Tours, www.fjtours.com.au/ was about 15 minutes late picking us up and they still had one more stop to make before we could leave the city for the tour and was a medium sized van. I had chosen our original company because it only held up to 14 people, but this one had maybe 24 or so. It’s the type of tour we try to avoid as lots of people can cause holdups getting on and off the bus etc. Most didn’t speak English as their first language and 1 or 2 talked constantly even if the guide was talking. ARGH!

It was a nice 1 hour drive to Featherdale Wildlife Park where we got to get our photos with Koalas and they let you pet them. Very deep and plushy little critters. We fed and took more photos wallabies and kangaroos. There were also lots of other birds and animals native to Australia there and my only complaint is we only had 55 minutes there. (the other company got there early before the park opened and we could watch the animal feedings) Got a quick glimpse of the crocodile and the dingoes as we ran out of the park to make it back to the van on time.





Then, we drive about another hour to a cute town called Leura where we bought some wonderful chocolates and a Christmas ornament of the Blue Mountains. Then we were taken to Katoomba Golf Club for a nice buffet lunch.



Finally we were off to Scenic World in the Blue Mountains. The views were wonderful and there are several rides there to experience different perspectives. The Scenic Railway which has a 52 degree incline (the steepest passenger train in the world) was closed for renovations.

We took the Scenic Cableway which is Australia’s biggest cable car holding 84 people that took us to the Scenic Skyway which has an electro-sceni  glass floor 270 meters above the valley and is Australia’s highest cable car. We saw Katoomba Falls which is 180 meters down to Jamison Valley.





At the bottom there were scenic walkways which would have liked to have time to have done. It was busy and we waited 20 to 30 minutes for each ride and by the time we got to the bottom we had 5 minutes and got in line to come back up. We were a bit past the time to be back, but were among some of the first people back. We had a 3:00 aboriginal show, and we were to be back at 2:30. At 10 after 3:00 with many people still missing, the guide got on the phone and called the culture show to see if they could schedule another one at 3:30. Getting a positive answer he said, those of you on board will be taken to the show and he would then return for the missing passengers. So, we had some time for the lookout over the Blue Mountains and got more shots of the famous “3 Sisters” peaks and the rest of the mountains and valleys. Breath-taking! Then, we went to the Aboriginal Show which was wonderful. They performed many native dances and told the stories of each. It was very well done and I got up on stage and did one of the dances with them.



We grabbed some Gelato for the bus ride back. We drove to a ferry station where we got on a ferry to bring us back to the area we started. We could have gone all the way to Circular Quay and sailed under the bridge, but it was past dinner time and we opted to get off at the Darling Harbour stop and we walked the area which has tons of restaurants and other attractions if we would have had more time to see them. We grabbed dinner at Casa Di Nico and got garlic sautéed olives and a nice pizza. Then, instead of taking the ferry back to the hotel, we walked. Once back at the Quay we got more gelato and then headed back to the hotel to pack up and get ready for the next days’ flight to Ayers Rock.

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