Australia: Sydney and The Blue Mountains

This past weekend, Hayley, Chris, and I went to Sydney to see Macbeth at the Sydney Opera House on Friday night. When I woke up at the end of the play, I could finally say I have seen a show at the Opera House. Saturday morning, we rented a car and drove about 2 hours NW to the blue mountains. Our first and favorite stop was Wentworth Falls, where we hiked around a beautiful 150-200 ft waterfall for several hours. Here are a couple pics...

A lot of the trails were basically caves in the side of the mountains, like in this picture.

This is Wentworth Falls, the namesake of the little town we were in, and you can barely see the area at the top of the falls where we went and you could swim in the pools at the top of the falls.

There were fun places to boulder around all over the place!

The blue mountains have a blue tinge to them because of an oily mist given off by the eucalptus trees in the dense forests.

After Wentworth Falls, we drove on to Katoomba, the main city in the Blue Mountains. Katoomba was pretty cool, but didn't have as much character as we expected (granted we are used to Pigeon Forge and Dollywood). In Katoomba, we got to see the 3 sisters from Echo Point, one of the most famous rock formations in the Blue Mountains. This is a great shot that Chris took, because my camera was already dead.

When we left Katoomba Sunday morning, we drove to Jenolan Caves on some of the most windy and narrow mountain roads I have ever been on, but thank goodness we were practically the only car on the road the entire way. Here is a shot of me driving on the wrong side of the road, and a shot of the Jenolan caves.

This is a separated pillar, one of the most famous formations in the Jenolan Caves.

After the Jenolan Caves, we had a long rural drive back to Newcastle, but we managed to stop probably 10 times to take random pictures, and right outside of Sydney, we found an Outback Steakhouse and you've never seen three American kids so excited.