Saturday, 19 May 2012

A Day Outside the City


Saturday, May 19, 2012
                I finished my Friday evening up with accordance to what I previously said I would do – catch a rugby game on the tv.  And might I add my tv in the apartment is super nice and large.  So my thoughts on rugby – I don’t get it. Things I do understand - 1. You can’t pass the ball forward, only laterally and backwards.  2. You can run or kick the ball forwards.  3. A “touchdown” is 4 points and a “field goal” is 2 points. 4. You have either 5 or six downs to get all the way down the field to score.  5. The ball can hit or bounce of the ground and be in play. 
                My day was extremely long.  I woke up and had the same breakfast as I did the day before.  Our bus left for our day of traveling at 8:00am.  We drove through traffic to our first stop, Sydney Olympic park.  On the way we crossed many bridges and I got to see so many boats rowing.  It made me so happy seeing just one thing that’s familiar to me.   I saw basically all boats, singles, doubles, fours, eights.  There seemed to be just as many dragon boats out on the water.  Shortly after we arrived at the park and it is very large.  It wasn’t the greatest stop, we only got to see the main stadium because everything is just so spread out and we were only there for 20 minutes.  Didn’t get to see the pool :/  in front of the main stadium was these poles where on each on are names of people who helped volunteer for the Olympics.  I looked through all the Br names and didn’t find a Brichacek. 
                Following the park we went to Featherdale, a zoo.  It was a lot of fun.  I roamed the zoo at my own pace and took tons of pictures.  There were so many birds! I tried to take a picture of a bird and then take a picture of the plaque that said what the bird was to help me remember in the future.  So many things in the zoo just jump out from the fences and roam the zoo.  Not to mention all the kangaroos roam free in the zoo.  I paid one dollar to get an ice cream cone filled with food and got to feed them.  One will just come straight up to you and look at your food and try to reach for it, and once you start feeding one, more will come.  They are such furry, soft animals.  There were also many koalas.  They’re boring in the sense that they don’t do anything, however they do wake them up and put them on a tree branch so you can pose with one, which I did.  They looked more annoyed when people are taking pictures and petting them. I saw a Dingo, Tasmanian devil, emu, ostrich, farm animals, wombat, and just so many different birds.  We were only there for about an hour and a half but I made it through I think everything. 

                We then made our way to a town called Leura.  This was an hour and a half away, something that I wasn’t too pleased about.  I feel like I spent the past semester on a coach bus traveling for crew so now any time spent on one I get either sleepy or crabby.  But we stopped at this time for lunch.  It was a cute downtown area and we directed to head to one café for a pie, but since I didn’t like the pie I had yesterday I hoped to get something else.  I stepped into four cafes before finally finding one I liked.  The first cafes I walked through all were just so expensive.  My final destination was Leura Gourmet Café and Deli.  I ordered a smoke salmon quiche and an apple and mango juice.  The quiche was delish and the juice was made with Australian fruit and it was good, a little thick but definitely did its job.  We all got back on the bus and headed over into the Blue Mountains.
                Our first stop was The Echo point.  It is just the edge of the cliff that allows you to see out into the Blue Mountains and a viewing point to see the Three Sisters.  I am unsure the story behind the three sisters and I’m sure I could look it up online but it’s just three rock statues sticking out form the cliffs, which is pictured below.

We got back on the bus after taking pictures and headed to where we hiked down into the mountains for an hour.  The hike was a lot of fun.  Most of it was a path worn down by everyone walking that only fit two people across.  Most of it was very steep and I was freezing the whole time being in the shade and that its fall here.  It was really pretty at all the life around in the mountains.  There are these large ferns that grow vertically with a trunk that they use to date the forest.  Some of the steps we went down were so steep I don’t know I never fell.  We saw many waterfalls and followed one down the father we walked. (the final picture posted) I thought walking down a path would be no exercise yet the constant contraction of my leg muscles as it the step below me to absorb my step definitely got tiring.  At the end of the path that we were on we took the steepest railway back up to the top.  It was just like a rollercoaster minus the speed.  Three other girls and I got the front row and it was a little scary going back up.  You are tilted forward it was hard not to hold the fence above your head to hold on.  I took a video as we were going back up and all it is is everyone in our group screaming, some found it more terrifying than others.  The horrible drive home was over two hours.  The movie Red Dog was put in for us to watch but I played my ipod and watched outside as we drove past.

 

Facts
-olympic park was built on top of waste, they flattened and crushed garbage hills and built everything on top of it cause it was the only place closest enough to the city with enough land
-taxi cabs have lights on top of them and when they are lit it means they are empty
-the blue mountains all used to be flat land but the mountains were made by the ground sinking in, why the tops of the mountains are flat and not pointed like other mountains.  

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