Emily is in Australia!! – part 2

Now with New Year’s Eve done, we decided to take a small road trip and headed out to Kanangra-Boyd National Park, located in the Blue Mountains, 180 km east of Sydney. We camped there for one night so we would have time to do a couple of walks in the area. It was well worth it. We went for a hike along the plateau top of Kanangra Wall. The wall is a formation of spectacular orange and grey sandstone and towers above the Kanangra Creek gorge.  We had fun hiking out to a ledge that gave us a magnificent view (and great pictures)! Another bonus of spending time in the park was that we came across a group of Eastern Grey kangaroos hopping towards us. Once they spotted us, they stopped, we stared at each other for a few minutes, and then they hopped off in another direction.

Neither Emily nor I are campers and our reward for spending the night in a tent was to spend the next night in the historic Caves House Hotel, located by Jenolan Caves, 30 km from our campground. The Jenolan Caves are the world’s oldest and the largest and most spectacular caves in Australia. We took in two tours and learned about stalagmites, stalactites, columns, shawl formations, straws and other rock formations.   The caves were massive and quite beautiful. Some of the passageways were quite small and we had to be careful to not bang our heads.

Next, we went from banging our heads on rocks to banging our heads on clouds! Emily went hang gliding at Stanwell Tops south of Sydney and totally loved it!! I was supposed to go next but the winds changed and conditions were no longer favourable. I was quite disappointed but glad that Emily had the opportunity.

During Emily’s visit we also attended a musical called “Ladies in Black”. The musical is set in Sydney in the 1950s, and tells the story of a group of women working in a department store and how their lives are changing. It was the best musical I have seen in a while, the story was good, the tunes were catchy, and the acting great.

The last major thing we did was head to Broadway Tattoo, one of the top five tattoo parlours in Sydney, so that Emily could get inked. She had the following inscription put on her right inner arm, just above the elbow; IŸ>Ÿ∧Ÿ∨.  The script stands for “I am greater than my highs and lows”.

 

That pretty much sums up the highlights of what we did.   We did also manage a fair bit of shopping, visiting with friends, dinners out, and just some rest and relaxation.

That’s the end of our adventures here and tomorrow we fly back home to Canada.