- Jan 25, 2017
- 2 min read

Day Trip to the Blue Mountains

I’m writing this post mainly as proof that I did something other than sit at the beach.

Oh and of course because the Blue Mountains are beautiful and should be high on the Sydney Bucket List.

There are a number of ways to get to the Mountains from the city. There are several bus tours which are great as you don’t have to think about anything. The only downside is each stop has time restrictions so you may not get to go exactly where you want.

You can also hop on a train which takes about 2 hours. Again, a good option and worth considering if you don’t have a car but you do have to walk from the train station up to the start of the walking trails… ok I know if you are about to walk 10 km what’s an extra km or so from the train station, but hey this is a judgement free zone.

My friend Ruth and I went for option 3 which is to drive ourselves. We rented a car for the day for about 40 AUD and drove up to Echo Point in the Katoomba area.

From Echo Point you can see the Three Sisters, arguably the most famous sight in the mountains. There are several legends explaining the sisters. One of the most popular is that the three sisters fell in love with 3 brothers from a different tribe but were forbidden to marry them.

The brothers did not accept this ruling so they started a tribal war to win the sisters hearts. In order to protect the three sisters from the war a witch doctor cast a spell on them and turned them into stone. Unfortunately, he passed away during the war and was unable to undo the spell later on.

Unlucky!

From Echo point we started our hike down the Giant Staircase, which is just that, an 800 meter descent down a bunch of stairs.

Around midway we began to panic that there was no other way out then back up the stairs, a fate worse than death in my opinion.

Thankfully, when we reached the bottom we saw two trails both offering hope of another exit. In total we walked about 10km and sneakily took the sky train back up from the valley. The nice thing about the Blue Mountains is you can do as little or as much as you want, as there is a form of transport between all the main view points.