Ya, so sorrie. I have not been disciplined enough to keep up to date on this blog. It has been a struggle to keep up with work and I have been kind of lazy. Hope to put in a couple of entries this coming two weeks on my Aussie holidays last month.
We decided to go down south for our holidays as both of us have not been there for far too long. It was also good that our buddies will be in Melbourne at about the same time. Thus we decided to go to Sydney for the first week and cross over to Melbourne during the second week.
Trying to get SQ seats to Sydney was surprising easy and we managed to purchase two-to-go tickets for a good price. It was a red-eye flight and after landing we headed straight to the train station to catch the 2 hour train journey to the Blue Mountains.
We stayed at Lilianfels in Katoomba for the 4 days that we were at Blue Mountains. This is the most expensive hotel in the Blue Mountains. The hotel is nice and is only a very short walk to the viewing gallery of the Three Sisters. The hotel is old but is well kept and modeled after the “Victorian” style. But I would like to try out the nearby Echoes Boutique Hotel which is more modern the next time I go there. Echopoint has bedrooms that are right at the edge of the Blue Mountains. Hmmm…wonder if there are earthquakes there.
We rented a car and drove ourselves to Jenolan Caves. The drive took about close to an hour and I had to drive through relatively steep and narrow downhill roads when reaching Jenolan Caves. I nearly thought that I had taken a wrong turn. There were close to 10 different cave tours and they were all guided tours. Looking at the rock formations brought back memories of my last cave tour over at Mulu National Park in Sarawak and there was at least some 15 years ago.
Other than Jenolan Caves, we spent the rest of our stay on shopping over at Leura, doing some tracking and exploring restaurants.
Though we stayed in Katoomba, we spent quite some time over at Leura. We did not like Katoomba as we felt it was getting too commercial. Leura is a small time and is very friendly. It has just two row of nice little shops. But these shops have their own specialties. There is a Christmas shop that sells Christmas stuff all year round; a candy shop that stocks all kind of candies and a small bookshop that has the type of books that I like.
For food the locals know best. I checked with one of the staff over at the Megalong bookshop to recommend restaurants that he personally will go and makan. He recommended two places which turned out to be really nice - Cafe Bon Ton and Pins. We loved Pins.
This lovely little place is run by a Scottish husband and a Japanese wife – Simon and Keiko. The style is Japanese-European fusion and the dinner we had was real pleasing both to the eye and taste.
I was quite surprised to find such quality of food at Leura; a small little town right up the mountains.
Café Bon Ton is modern Aussie food and is also good. Compared to what we had at these two restaurants, the two-hatters restaurant over at the Lilianfels Hotel was over-rated and we had to pay a lot more L.
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