The journey away from Sydney on Tuesday was grey and damp and drear. The Scots have a word for it: "dreich". I found the YHA on what seems like the main street of Katoomba. No mod cons here in this 1918 art deco place that was called Homesdale. I think it started life as a guest house. To be fair it is an interesting building but I think it's overdue a refresh. There is wifi obviously but it gets a bit flaky by the time you're down the other end of the building where my room is. The room is a reasonable size for the 5 residents but there are only two power sockets, we had two each at Sydney! And it has taken a day and a half for the light in my end of the room still not to be fixed.
Off out for lunch and over the road was a place that had potential, it even had the word 'vegan' on its menu. I had 90 minutes until the tourist bus left. I was pointed in the direction of a table for one upstairs on a little balcony, not shown to my table mind you. After a while, someone showed up and I ordered my lunch - a coffee, poached eggs on sourdough and a piece of carrot cake. The coffee came rather slowly, but it was speedy compared to the main. A couple of girls near me were fidgeting for attention, even taking to leaning over the edge of the balcony to attract attention. My food was warm but not hot and the eggs seemed greasy, more like fried than poached. Meanwhile the carrots were being grown somewhere. Then harvested carefully by some underpaid farmworker, packed into individually hand-crafted boxes, put on a slow boat to China, returning to Australia some time later where they lingered awaiting their fate. Eventually, they would become a jolly lovely carrot cake of good proportion fed to someone who'd forgotten what they'd had for their main course. I had to ask twice if I could have my cake and no-one seemed at all apologetic about the fact. I have no idea what they were upto because while perusing the action downstairs (which I had plenty of time to do) I could see staff wandering about, seemingly not doing a great deal. The food did look interesting and a bit hip, but goodness me, get the service sorted out.
The bus, however, turned up on time. It's a tourist, hop on, hop off thing that loops round the sights of Katoomba and Leura. And yes, it's a red, double decker London bus. I bought a 3 day pass as a bundle with my rail ticket. The driver does his guiding you along bit, persuading you of the merits of each of the 29 stops especially when there's not a lot of visibility and much of the attraction to this area is the spectacular scenery. I think he was slightly upset that I already knew where I wanted to go (one positive aspect to having all that time waiting for my lunch to arrive). I went to the Everglades Historic House and Gardens. Such peace and calm and beauty after the hurly burly and excitement of Sydney. The gardens were lovely, really quite European in style and planting, and beautifully landscaped. I shall have to return to see the house as I didn't have enough time before the place shut. And it was free as I'm a member of the National Trust and Everglades is an Australian NT property.
Still on my cultural journey from Sydney, I stopped off at the local cinema and bought a ticket for later. Only trouble was the film "A million ways to die in the West"! Liam Neeson was good as the baddy, Charlize Theron was the pretty cow-girl and the plot was a bit tenuous. But for $8.50 it wasn't too bad.
The usual mixture for a day with me!
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