Blue Mountain Trip

Ah, the Blue Mountains – a perfect little get away, break from the big city, and relaxing and romantic retreat….unless of course, you are going with C&G Schuster. Dare we do anything without a little entertainment, amusement, drama, or stories to tell? Alas, we deliver as usual. The question is – where to start? Since this is a written dialogue, it’s probably easiest to start…at the beginning.
We planned to leave Central Station on the 6:10 p.m. train. Carey dragged the little suitcase all the way to work (in addition to 2 last minute bags), while Greg was smartly manned with the backpack. Leaving work a few minutes early, Carey wheeled and sprinted to get to the station in time to meet Greg and get tickets. Unfortunately, Greg was stuck in a meeting and wasn’t able to get to the train station in time to catch the 6:10 train. We finally got on the 7:10 train and after rearranging dinner reservations and letting the bed & breakfast know we would be arriving a little later than planned we arrived in the Blue Mountains.
After a lovely dinner, we attempted to get settled into our room for the night. This attempt took a bit more effort than we anticipated. Aside from Greg refusing to remove his flip-flops (let’s be honest, he does that in our apartment still) and dressing for bed in head to toe clothes (again, he does this even at the nicest hotels we’ve ever stayed in), we were faced with bigger issues. Those would be the giant moths that were hell bent on spending the night with us. And neither of us is very keen on the camping thing, nor are we into sleeping in a bedroom smaller than a closet closed up with moths flying around. Please refer to the pictures in the latest album to see our roommates and the rather hysterically funny adventure of attempting to scoot the moths out of the room by switching various lights on and off to finally resorting to killing them after they flew into Carey every time she had the task of turning on the decoy light and was bruised from screaming and diving out of the moths altered flight path (all of this taking place at midnight with people attempting to sleep in the surrounding bedrooms). A restless night indeed followed.

Up early and out the door, we headed to the town of Katoomba for some “brekky” (that’s Australian for breakfast) – since we clearly agreed breakfast at the “guesthouse” where we were staying was out of the question. We had a great meal and headed out to the first hike of the day. We decided to do the “Great Stairs” hike to the Federal Pass and on to Katoomba Falls. All in all, it was estimated to be a 3 hour hike. In the end, it was Greg’s worst nightmare and Carey’s most entertaining part of the trip! Let’s just warn you all now, if you have any, even miniscule fear of heights – DO NOT TAKE THE GREAT STAIRS (mom schu – this means you). As many of you know, Greg hates heights. Sooooo, the stairs that literally went straight off the cliff and were completely open between stairs so one could see straight down were more than terrifying for Greg who death gripped both the stone sides of the mountain and the one hand rail! It was more than 900 stairs of death defying accomplishment for our mountain man, Greg.
After earning ourselves quite the sore legs from hiking for over 4 hours that day, we were awarded with the most amazing meal and view we could have ever asked for. We chatted with a lovely couple, who invited us to the horse races with them (we may go)! We also sat by a fire, sipping wine (Carey) and Diet Coke (Greg) and listened to the piano player play Billy Joel’s Piano Man – a perfect end to an interesting weekend.
Then we came home to some pretty exciting news. Someone kindly spent all of the money in our bank account! Apparently, the taxi driver Greg used on Valentine’s Day stole our card number and had a grand time spending all of our money at Kmart and the liquor store! Bottoms up cab driver! And, cheers to another adventure down under!