2018 – Part 08 – Journey from Sydney airport to Blue Mountains (Katoomba)

We need wheels!

Our rental car was offsite, and once we found our pick-up location the shuttle arrived in 10-15 minutes. Although it was breezy, for 11am it was warm, over 20C. I could take the challenge to see if I could handle this kind of weather.

Once we arrived at the rental car location we were assigned a Toyota Camry, and could have any colour so long as it was white. It was fairly new as it had a back up camera and both USB and Bluetooth connections for the stereo. Once we remembered that the driver’s side was on the right side of the vehicle, we filled up the trunk with our luggage, and began our trek to our first stop, a mall!

Distance travelled: approximately 120km

I know what you are all thinking. A mall?!

There was a mall about 20 minutes away, Roselands. I found it online as it provided the potential to get everything we wanted: Distilled water, snacks for the car, stamps for postcards and a power bar to make connecting and charging our devices easier.

After lunch in the food court we found distilled water and did a full lap of the grocery store to find snacks and scope out the differences between Canada and Australia.

We skipped stamps & the power bar and resumed driving. Before we left the parking lot we saw something not uncommon in Australia – a bushfire.

This one was located south, over near Heathcote, however being on a hill the plumb of smoke looked ominous. Back on the road it was another short trip until a Krispy Kreme, and in that time two convoys of fire trucks headed towards the bushfire.

(NB: It was under control by the end of the day)

Krispy Kreme & Simpsons

Krispy Kreme in Australia had a limited time promotion for the typical Simpsons pink doughnut. After the coutless hours I spent watching the cartoon while in university, we had to make the stop and photo op.

The doughnut was fine, Amber found them extremely sweet. I gladly ate it to keep up my energy and to slow the onset of my jetlag. 

Drive to Blue Mountains

Just west of Penrith the divided highway comes to an end. Even though we were on a highway, bicycles are allowed to travel on the paved shoulder and there are lanes for bicycles to cross the on and off-ramps to the highway. We are both thankful that you cannot bike on the highways back home! We had two lanes each way that got us to Katoomba, the town closest to Echo Point. As it was Sunday we were certainly driving against traffic and we had only a minor delay due to a collision, versus the Sydney bound traffic that was backed up for over 10km due to the collision!

Our first stop for two nights, The Carrington Hotel, cannot be missed as we approached Katoomba from the highway. Perched on the high ground, the hotel, built in the 19th century, appears to overlook the Blue Mountains area.

We arrived in good time. It was still sunny outside and the initial excitement of being half a world away from home had started to give way to the reality that we had spent almost 48 hours traveling and almost 70 hours away from a proper bed.  Before we let our head hit the pillow though we grabbed dinner at Station bar that offered a woodfire oven baked pizza.  The personal sized pizza was plenty and we were full before our plates were empty.  We returned to our room and would have quickly fallen asleep, if it wasn’t for Amber spotting a spider on the ceiling. She didn’t want her first night to be her last, and a gentleman from the front desk came to the rescue to remove the spider. This was the time we realized how high the ceilings were that we had! The employee ended up finding a plastic pipe that was at least 8 feet long in order for him to get to the spider. He was able to get the spider and out the door it went.  We thanked him for his help and we promptly fell asleep.