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!

Happy Birthday Greg! Happy Valentine's Day All!

So, we are just finishing up 7 weeks down under. As expected things have gotten busier and busier with work and life in general, but we are still making time to enjoy the city and planning trips for the upcoming months.

Last weekend, we hiked the Coogee to Bondi coastal trail, which ended up being a bit longer than we thought! Though, it was beautiful and well worth the effort. Carey had lost her grandmother earlier in the week, which was very difficult for her and even more so being so far from the family. So we took this time to reflect on her gram's life, the amazing person she was, and her legacy that shall always live on. It was a great experience to help with the healing process.

Since we have had many inquiries into upcoming trips, here is a quick synopsis of those that are planned. To celebrate birthdays, we are taking “birthday trips,” as our presents. So, in honor of Greg’s birthday, we are heading to the Blue Mountains for the weekend. We catch the train Friday after work and will be staying in a cute bed & breakfast for the weekend and have dinner reservations at some highly recommended restaurants in the mountains. We will be sure to have some great pics to post from this trip! Here is a link to the area: http://www.bluemts.com.au/

Then in April, we are flying down to Melbourne for Carey’s birthday trip. We are looking forward to having a long weekend with the Anzac holiday falling on Friday, April 25. Then we are headed back to stateside twice – for Kelly’s wedding in July and Alison’s wedding in November! We will be stopping in Fiji for a few days on our way home in November, which we are very excited about!

Our next big trip will be up to the Gold Coast, Brisbane, Surfer’s Paradise, Fraser Island, and then out to stay on the Great Barrier Reef for Easter. This will be the biggest trip (hate to call it a vacation as we somehow manage to pack so much in that we really aren’t relaxing and properly “vacationing”) and most time we’ve had off of work since our honeymoon, so we are very much looking forward to a longer trip that will be a good mixture of sight seeing, snorkeling and relaxing out on an island in the reef!

To close out a big year of travels, we are looking forward to a trip to New Zealand over Christmas. In the meantime, we are also soliciting you to plan a trip as well – to come visit us! We heard about the crazy weather the north east is having. It’s a lovely and sunny 75-80 degrees here. Tempting?

Beach Hopping

We’re coming to realize that Sydney might have more beaches then the entire east coast of the United States. As we meet more and more people we find out about beaches we had never heard of. We try to write everything down in an attempt to keep a list going of places we need to visit on the weekends. The number of beaches that we need to visit is getting so extensive that we decided one a day just wasn’t cutting it. So this past Sunday we hit up three. The first was a harbour beach. Harbour beaches tend to be a little less crowded and with a little less surf. However, they are often have spectacular sights, are surrounded by lively little towns, and are great for swimming as a result of the lack of surfers. Balmoral Beach was referred to us by a new friend in the running club – we had to check it out since he said it is where he would want to get married. It was definitely beautiful and the swimming was great. In fact, Greg was enjoying the water so much that when he finally got out, he realized that his wedding ring had fallen off. He attempted to borrow someone’s goggles to scour the ocean floor; however we are sad to report that the ring is gone for good. No worries, we’re either going to buy a new one here in Sydney or there is a popular tattoo parlor down the street. We’re thinking that might be a better route to go, then we won’t have to worry about the ring getting lost again (unless a shark decides that the fingers look tasty, which here in Australia is always a possibility).

After Balmoral, we head further up north to a beach on the Northern Shore called Curl Curl. Being up north, the beach was much less developed and also much larger than any of the previous Sydney beaches we have visited. It was also extremely beautiful and the water was the perfect temperature for a swim. And while missing Maddie is an often discussed topic between Carey and Greg, the lagoon on the beach where all the people brought their dogs for a swim didn’t help matters on that front. Sydney is definitely a dog friendly city, no doubt about that.
As if we didn’t have enough of the beaches for one day, we decided to meet up with some friends down in Coogee Beach later that night for some outstanding outdoor bars. The beaches seem to be the place to frequent during Sydney summers, and it’s pretty obvious why.