Shit I Do In Sydney: Solving Crimes and Hiking Mountains
Sydney, Australia: Being a tourist in my own city, part three
In this blog post, I go to the Blue Mountains, and then I just watch a lot of TV and go for a couple of drinks with friends.
My old travel buddy Sophie is now working with me at The Naked Duck, so we get to spend more time together, which is great. We both get a little bored of life from time to time, and discuss things to do about it. I have told her about my Sydney bucket list, and she invites me to go with her and her friends to the Blue Mountains one weekend. We’ve had eight trips on the Opal card already, so it’s completely free!
We take a bus to Blacktown super early in the morning, and from there we have some time before our train. We order toast and coffee from a little café at the station, but the poor woman behind the counter is all by herself and super slow and trying to get a mental person to leave, as he’s harassing everyone in the shop. I really feel for her.
We then spend the next few hours on a crammed train, before we make our way to Echo Point. It’s absolutely swarmed with tourists, so we begin our descend on the Giant Stairway. It’s frightening, but beautiful as we get to see The Three Sisters.
We hike through the forest and see a waterfall and eventually make it to the railway, which takes us up an insanely steep hill to Scenic World. From there, we try the cableway down and then back up, and then we take the skyway across to get back to Echo Point. By now we’re pretty exhausted and head back home.
Sharon and I go for a bottle of wine at Coogee Bay Hotel one afternoon, where we pay $26 for a salad without getting upset about it. The only reason I am stating this is so this picture makes sense:
I also meet up with Aitor and we talk about how I’ll soon be out of a job. I gave my two weeks notice to The Naked Duck. We have beer and play a game of Shit Pool, where I basically just try to hit the balls.
While I’ve been ticking a lot of things off my bucket list lately by being a proper tourist, I still find time to get into and then introduce Sharon to Making a Murderer. We start binge watching it and not leaving the house except to get more goon. It’s so addicting, and we want more after we’ve stopped crying over the series finale. I then re-introduce her to my favourite show, Parks and Recreation.
Now we have a proper ritual: we sit down and have dinner and put an episode on and keep going until we’ve completely distracted ourselves with our phones or talking passionately about something. We do a little dance to the theme song, and drink lots and lots of goon. I have started making references in real life, and sometimes we call each other Ann and Leslie (Sharon’s obviously Ann). We are losing our marbles. Send help. And more seasons. And one more of these burgers from KFC.
