A lucid moment in the madness: beyond the opera house (part i): katoomba

Since Sydney is such a popular tourist destination, i shall not bore you all by bombarding you with more photos of the opera house (which bears a striking resemblance to Esplanade) or the harbour bridge (which is a ... bridge) etc etc. and anyway, for me to blog a full 12 days account of my trip will take me till Christmas 2012 - and many more vicious circle of late nights and hard core caffeine. so i shall just present the sights which i think most tourists to Sydney will miss and prove that Sydney is an interesting place to go too!
__________________________

Blue Mountains is a must-go travel destination in Sydney famed for the Three Sisters rock formation. Due to budget constraints and our inability to adhere stictly to tour schedules, we took a 2 hour train ride to Katoomba where there are 2 bus operators which offers a "hop-on, hop-off" bus service around Blue Mountains and we can tour the sights at our own pace.

The touristy thing to do to show that you have "been there and done that" is to take a photo in front of the 3 pieces of rock named Three Sisters... so of course we have to do it!

Then we decided that seeing is not enough, we have to touch it since we travelled so far for it.

So we embarked on some serious steep stairs climbing to reach the Three Sisters.

And after lunch and some standard cable car ride stuff, we embarked on a 1-hour trek through the forests on tracks like the one below to seek out this place called Leura Cascades. So it was one hour of walking through trees and more trees but there are several good lookout points along the way which offer great views of the place. On a side note, Blue Mountains is a great place to trek. Compared to the Tropics, it is less humid and there are less horrible insects and snakes to look out for.

Leura Casacdes: The sight we walked one hour for...

Pretty but I wish we could get down and touch the water

So we were pretty much done with the Blue Mountains part of Katoomba as the other place that most people associate with Katoomba is the Jenolan Caves - supposed to be one of the most extensive limestone cave systems in Australia, but don't quote me for this as i am not sure of the source. As we were based at Sydney, we had to endure another 2 hour train ride back to Katoomba again and another hour of bumpy-puke-inducing bus ride to visit the caves but it was well worth it...

The Blue Lake: first sight of the place where the beautiful blue is caused by some reflection of the minerals in the water... i forgot how. i am not a scientist.

Going down into the underground caves...

I should let you know that this is not a dark, smelly, bat-cluttered cave as people would normally associate with caves. I would classify this as a five-star cave, complete with remote-controlled lighting and sound systems. i know this doesn't sound very "natural", but the lights give a very good view of the interior of the caves and the sound effects highlight the good acoustics of the cave which is used frequently as a venue for musical concerts.

The famous Cathedral Chamber: What happens here is that the guide will switch off all the lights and a nice "church-hymn-soundalike" melody will start playing. Then the lights will start lighting up one by one according to the music. Quite an experience...