Blue Mountains Trip

It´s Vice-Chancellors Week, which means no lectures and tutorials. A break feels good indeed, after the hectic last couple of weeks. On Monday I took part in this uni marketing research group discussion. UTS is continuosly aiming to improve its services and marketing to international students, which makes sense since education is one of Australia´s major exporting products. It was a group of 10 international students - all from Europe - discussing about our expections, impressions, positive and negative experiences, opinions etc concerning Australia, Sydney and UTS. The discussion lasted for an hour and half and was constructed to be pretty free - this marketing guy was just kind of providing guidelines and asking some questions. It was interesting noticing how similarly other European students think about many issues. We all had noticed the formation of groups based on nationalities, good service at the uni, not being able to choose the most interesting subjects, interaction and focusing on local issues at lectures etc... Many of us viewed Sydney as a diverse, vibrant and friendly city with lots of space and variable activities. I enjoyed the discussion, and we were given free lunch and $60 cash :) Afterwards around half of us went to Darling Harbour to get coffee from Starbucks and sit outside chatting and enjoying the sunshine. We exchanged contact info, and some of them took part in my cocktail party yesterday :)

We had been planning a day trip to Blue Mountains already for months, and finally did it on Tuesday. It was me, Tim, Renar, Cameron, Kath (Cameron´s (girl)friend from Tasmania), Sharon and Anders (an exchange student from Denmark) taking part in the trip. We woke up at 5.30am to a beautiful morning. Unfortunately not everyone was that excited about the early departure and we missed our train at the Central Station by just few minutes :/ So we sat at the cafe there for almost an hour, reading newspapers and maganizes, before taking the next train to Blue Mountains. The train stopped at almost 20 stations and it took close to two hours to get to Katoomba, from where we took the bus to Echo Point. First we took some pictures of the Three Sisters, which is an impressive rock formation and one of the main attractions. Then we started our hike by going down some 2000 steps! On our way we got to go to one of the sisters before getting all the way down to rainforest. We walked this pretty short loop in the rainforest, where Sharon and I discovered a jungle swing (a bendy branch of tree hanging like a swing) and we had a cookie break. Then we walked past the Three Sisters again, this time on the bottom of them, and continued our way towards the cable train station. Most of the path went along the edge of the rock providing some nice views of the mountains.

I´m holding the mountain together lol

When we got to the cable train station, after walking around 11km, we split into two groups. Tim and Renar took the cable train up to the visitor centre, while the rest of us decided to climb up some thousands of steps! I had already taken the train before when I visited Blue Mountains in February with a tour, so I didn´t want to pay to do it again. Besides, there were some good lookouts on the way up and I took some good pictures. When I reached the top Tim and Renar were there already, taking silly pictures of these naked statues. They persuaded me to join them for some stupid shots, before a school teacher told us to behave in fronf of his group of kids. The others joined us a bit later and we had our picknic lunch. We had brought bread rolls, ham, chicken, cheese, cookies and chocolate, that made up a good meal. And we bought ice cream for dessert. The weather was beautiful and we spent quite a while just laying in the sun before starting our walk back to Echo Point.

The Three Sisters

Anders, Sharon, Tim, I, Cameron, Kath and Renar

This time we walked on top of the cliff so we could see over the mountains. The walk was a lot shorter, too. We stopped for a rather long time at one of the lookouts; just to hang out, take some photos (people liked playing with Cameron´s pro camera), and Tim and Anders climbed to the roof of this little rock cave thing. It wasn´t a long walk back to Echo Point, from where we took the bus to Katoomba. Just to repeat the morning, we missed the train by a couple of minutes and had to wait for an hour for the next one. So we headed to the nearest pub for beer and coke. Our train trip home was entertaining, people playing with cameras etc. Once we got home I just took a shower and pretty much went straight to bed and fell asleep instantly. It was a really nice day altogether to spend outdoors :)