The personal authentic travels of a world-wide drifter, you'll always see pics of me at the locations being described (if the other blogs you're reading don't do that, odds are they were NEVER there, just saying…)
Spent my first day in Katoomba appreciating the rock formation that is The Three Sisters, in all it’s glory (and it is pretty glorious); and, I got in a good two plus hours of mostly easy hiking between Echo point and Katoomba Falls, along the Prince Henry Cliff Walk: a paved walkway which skirts just below the top of the plateau upon which the city of Katoomba sits. In this case I think the pictures speak for themselves, while at the same time doing no real justice how it feels to be in the presence of this sort of natural beauty in real life. Really, this view IS worth the trip.
As such, there’s really not much for me to say about these photos, other than I had wonderful afternoon enjoying the views, so I’ll let them do the talking.
The QR code link is worth following as it loads a really well written description of the location and the available walks (better than what I could do here).
I began my visit at what is called Echo Point… I’m not sure why as I didn’t hear any echo’s when folks called out… but maybe if EVERYONE was quiet, and one person did, we might…
After enjoying the views from Echo point I took the ramp (which leads off to the right of the point — looking out towards the sisters) down to the Prince Henry Cliff walk that goes from the point to the falls
In this picture I was actually as impressed with the foreground as the background, especially the color
A former Apple employee took this with the new phone and airdropped it to me — while it looked WAY better on his phone, I’m not sure it looks better on my computer screen… could be he airdropped a low pixel version
You’ll notice that it was windy as heck, and that the Australians were all wearing sweaters or coats… that’s because along with being windy it was 66F, which in my mind made it great weather for some serious walking…
Menapause and carrying around 30 lb of excess fat, it’s a thing
Also, before I started the walk I was very specific with the park staff about how I had bad hips and knees and needed to know if there’s be any serious amounts of stairs and or climbing along the way… suffice it to say they lied when they said no difficult stairs and that the whole thing was well paved throughout. There weren’t a LOT of spots like this, but if I were actually handicapped I’d be seriously pissed off… as it was it just slowed me down for a bit.
Lilianfels Resort & Spa is located in an historic house in the town of Katoomba, New South Wales (NSW), Australia, near the Blue Mountain‘s Three Sisters rock formation on the edge of what Australians refer to as their “grand canyon.” Among other attractions available to those NOT staying at the hotel, is their High Tea … but for me, the meal was a MAJOR let down; it was no where near as tasty as it looked, and is most definitely NOT worth the calories.
High Tea for one
As those who follow my blog know, I have a tradition of going to High Tea with my best friend since childhood, who from time to time will join me for a few days (she loves traveling, but not alone, and her hubby doesn’t, so she’ll take a few days off and join up with me. Since she’s not here to share it with me, I am having high-tea with an oversized teddy bear I spotted on the other side of the room that looked lonely (there being no children in the room that day).
Having the bear as my partner tea partner was my idea, not theirs — they just looked at me funny when I asked if I could. But as I was one of the first people to show up, and no kids had arrived, they let me have it.
All in all the sandwiches were ok but not amazing nor worth much of a mention; to be honest I have had better at pretty much every high tea I’ve ever gone to. The hot tea and the scone were fine (nothing particularly memorable),
and in spite of having sat myself directly adjacent to the window, my only view was of a smallish garden with high hedge rows behind it.
So mostly I’m going to talk about what should have been the highlight of the Tea, especially considering how pretty they were…. the desserts,
When I fist got the tray, I was seriously impressed that the Panna-cotta has cotton candy on top of it … but here is the thing, and this was the first in a long stream of bad thinking and planning on the part of the pastry chef: When you get a high tea you don’t dive into the desserts first. Instead, you leisurely have the sandwiches and the scones… So that between arriving on my table and my finally getting to it ….the cotton candy did what cotton candy does when dampened… it shrinks and turns into a sticky glob
The yellow thing in the middle turned out to be a white chocolate spoon. At first I was like “well that’s smart” … but as soon as tried to use it as a spoon, it snapped…. and then when I tried to use that now shortened “half” spoon, it also snapped … So that finally I just gave up and grabbed my metal spoon…. only to find that the Panna-cotta was kind of tasteless and definitely not worth the calories, and I left it half eaten.
Next I had what turned out to be a beet root tart (Australians like Canadians are very into eating beets — because they’re healthy) and and love beets in general …. but this tart? Well let’s just say it’s ‘different’… nothing to write home about, and leave it at that…. but beetroot, healthy… so I ate the whole thing.
This cheesecake dropped a pineapple apricot jam on my leg as soon as picked it up … and since again, it was more pretty than tasty, I put it down after the first bite
A custard tart with fruit perched on it… the custard was good the cup that held it was not so much — you sort of had to pick the fruit off and eat it separate because the custard wasn’t firm enough to hold it in place and the whole thing was way to big to pop into your mouth whole… again, bad pastry design.
This oh so precious looking brownie ??? Again, not very tasty. In fact I once again put it down after the first bite because it just wasn’t worth the calories. And the hard candy on top did help a bit, but it was mostly just sugar.
Upon first arriving in Katoomba I tried to find a good place to eat dinner. This restaurant was listed as one of the very best it town on multiple sites, so I called and asked if they were open and could have dinner there… suffice it to say the guy who picked up the phone almost laughed at me, and gave a clear “no, sorry, we’re fully booked.” And since, for the most part, I can’t be bothered with this sort of place (unless its a very tiny yet popular place, I rarely find the food at places that require booking ahead to be worth the hassle), I just sort of wrote it off as one of the places I wouldn’t be going to.
The next day was a bit windy, but I decided to walk down the street towards the Three Sisters, the major tourism draw for this town, which took me right by the restaurant. I decided to go up to the building and if possible try to stick my head in, and maybe to make a booking — because I had seen they had Kangaroo on the menu, and I wanted to try it.
As luck would have it, although the place was completely empty, the door was open although there was woman was inside standing near the bar, who seemed to be busy taking phone bookings for that evening. I assumed therefore that it wasn’t open yet for business, but that they were just prepping for that evening.
So I asked if I could see the menu and maybe make a booking, and she was like, “well we’re open now, would you like lunch?”
“You’re open?”
“Yes, we’ve just started doing lunch on weekends. Didn’t you see the sign?” (it was a Saturday)
“I was just walking by and I didn’t see any sign.”
“Oh, it must have blown over” (like I said, it was windy
Now here’s the thing, according to the various web sites I had looked at Pins wasn’t supposed to be open at lunch, and even the night before when I called the guy hadn’t mentioned it … and if I hadn’t been walking right by it I would I would never have known. Which sort of explains why I was the only person in the restaurant for most of my meal… towards the very end a 2nd couple also stopped by to make reservations, and ended up staying for lunch.
I ordered the pumpkin soup …. normally they put a dollop of cream on top but for me that didn’t.
It ended up being kind of overwhelmingly peppery without the added fat, but coffee is good. It surprised me a bit because in the the states pumpkin soup would normally be sweeter, and with cinnamon in it. Apparently that’s NOT how the Aussies like it, what I learned from talking to the woman is that here pumpkin soup is always savory and with lots of pepper (a fact later confirmed to me by others).
For my main I ordered the seared kangaroo with a green salad. The woman “warned” me that Kangaroo because it’s so low fat has to be eaten rare, and I told her that was fine because I actually prefer my steak “blue” … which is a bit like seared tuna, and is borderline raw.
She said that because their usual dressing are full of oil the cook did some improving. The kangaroo was not bad, but not amazing… Bison is way more flavorful and I can see why in this case the locals tended to prefer to eat lamb, mutton or beef. But apparently apparently Kangaroo is very healthy. The way it was cooked it came out tender; and the taste was more like ostrich than beef or bison… it has a very subtle flavor … I actually felt that the cook has overwhelmed it with the taste of charring/burned edges.
Firstly….Let’s hear it for countries where you don’t refrigerate eggs.
You’ve got to love the Australian sense of humor; that said, in Aussie slang words are shortened, so chickens become chooks
Most Americans don’t realize this but the rest of the world does not refrigerate their eggs (read this link to understand why we do it when the rest of the world doesn’t, if you don’t already know). While staying at Airbnb’s in the US owned by recent immigrants I have regularly had to explain to them why storing their eggs decoratively on a table (the same way as fruit), is not only NOT a good idea, it’s down right dangerous — and then explained to them why that is.
So, here in Australia, if you’re shopping for eggs, do NOT look for them in the refrigerated section…. you’ll find them stacked up in the aisles.
So I thought this was a really cool idea for a store that I’d never seen before: I’ve seen combo coffee bar bookstores many times and combo coffee bar flower stores a few times, but this is the first time I’ve seen a custom high end/trendy tailor/coffee AND whiskey bar… that also is a trendy restaurant.
I was walking around the redeveloping (it started in 2012 and isn’t expected to be completed until 2023) Barangaroo section of Sydney when the I was drawn into what I initially thought was a fabulous men’s clothing store by some really great music that was drifting into the street
According to the waitress who walked over to me as soon as I stuck my head in the door, asking, “have you ever been here before?”, the owner of the Shirt Bar is a tailor who does custom tailored suits for both men and women — but in this day and age, those skills won’t necessarily pay the rent. So he had the brilliant idea to open his business in the new and trendy Barangaroo section of Sydney (an area recently converted from a container/shipping terminal into a trendy/hipster business center and tourist haunt) … So, this store is not only a very high end custom tailer, but it is also a coffee house
Let’s face it, knowing where the clean toilets are is a THING, and it’s especially difficult while traveling. In this regard Sydney public toilets are quite impressive…. and I’m talking STREET side toilets!!!
Now public toilets in malls, stores, or public buildings are usually pretty good, but let’s face it, street side public toilets can get pretty well… yucky/smelly/ nasty, etc., and are as a rule to be avoided
I am thrilled to say that so far, I’m finding that Sydney has VERY clean street side public toilets… McDonald’s clean, or better yet, Costco clean, which is an even higher standard (there’s a reason why while driving around the North American continent my pit stop of choice for both gas and bathrooms is Costco).
The bathroom above was the 3rd public one I have used since coming here … and I’m finding the public toilets are cleaner than some of the restaurants toilets I’ve encountered while here. As I was in the toilet shown above, a British woman (with a thick country brogue) and I were talking about it — and she noted how the Sydney were much cleaner than the British public toilets, in spite of the fact that they were all free, while in the UK toilets aren’t.
Patonga is a sleepy sea-side town without a train station, that’s located about an hour north of downtown Sydney. It is a nice place for a quiet relaxed stay (and to escape the heat of the city). It’s basically a beach, beach sides homes, one seemingly nice hotel (I never entered beyond the restaurant areas) with a bar/restaurant and cafe (with free WIFI!!!), a few art galleries representing the art of local artists, and a post box. Be warned, the place doesn’t even have a proper convenience store, and I’m not even sure there’s regular bus. And NOT all Australian cell phone companies service the place… lord knows ours didn’t — hence our excitement of it being freely available at the hotel about a block away from our beach house.
This last weekend my travel-buddy Mik took to me visit an ex-girlfriend of his, someone who is now “family” for him. She has friends who have a beach house in this small town north of Sydney and had lent it to her.
Because there was construction on the train line we needed to take there, we had to take a bus from the central train station (the main hub station for Sydney)…
which I thought was a good thing because you see more from buses than from trains
Ultimately we ended up taking the bus none stop all the way from Sydney’s central station to an external suburb called Berowra — for what seemed like good one hour ride, possibly more, at which point the we were transferred to a waiting train. Now from my perspective this was pretty unusual. In the States, they’ll usually work on one or two station’s (or bits of line) at a time and at most this sort of filler bus will takes the place of that, here they seem to prefer to do the whole line all at once.
Note how rural this area is
From there, we connected to the train (which should have started at Central Station, but for the construction)
…. and took that to Woy Woy Station. Then we walked the distance from the station to the local mall which held the grocery store (ALL major brand groceries in Australia seem to be located in malls)
where we got some food, and met his friend who drove us the rest of the way.
In part I think this was because a) there was no connecting bus to the place, and b) as I mentioned before, there are no grocery stores in Patonga (not even a small one for basics like milk and eggs).
Patonga while very small is a VERY nice place…. it’s a tiny peninsula surrounded by a river which empties into the sea, and slightly protected bay
When we arrived I was amazed by how close to the beach we were
A panorama shot with our house (with it’s back porch) to the right and the beach to the left, just past the sand dunes, the panorama distorts the distances a bit, but it was very close
The path from our back-porch from our porch, sans the panorama view
Path through the dunes to the beach
As the pictures show Patonga is really nice, and the placement of the home we were staying at couldn’t have been better.
We swam in the ocean… which was great escape because the house didn’t have any air conditioning and the temps hit 110 F that week… i.e., HOT!
Just above the spot where the river meets the ocean and there is a really strong current that will carry you down towards the sea, but that runs right into a sandbank which will catch you … we road it multiple times, really relaxing
And had a few meals at the local restaurant, which we were really excited to discover had free wifi, because the house we were staying at didn’t….
the cell phone company my friend and I had signed up for wasn’t offering up ANY bars, let alone data. (His girlfriend’s phone WAS getting signal, but she was on a much more expensive provider.)
First time there, my friend ordered an iced mocha and got this — what best can be described as a deconstructed Iced mocha
we were impressed… I on the other hand ordered an iced coffee and an avocado toast
Like I mentioned before, the temps near us had reached 110F, and as a result I was getting very dehydrated… I don’t handle heat well
I bought us drinking coconuts and 2 cold pressed watermelon juices JUST for me… cause I dehydrate faster than most people
After, my friend suggested we take the coconuts with us, and when we got back to the house he opened them up using a saw he found in the garage, and we ate the meat…
That same day I had a one on one with a praying mantis — I honestly don’t remember EVER seeing one that wasn’t in a cage before
One of the things that I learned while in Patonga is that the silk of Aussie spiders is impressively strong… like seriously….way stronger than at home. That, and apparently the ones with webs are as a rule not the poisonous ones… my travel partner threw a small stress fit when he heard I wanted to find small rocks to bring back to the states and put on my Dad’s tombstone. Under rocks is where you find the most poisonous ones. He said that I should absolutely not pick them up without gloves.
… Also, because there was no air-con where we were staying I slept with the sliding glass doors open, protected from intruders by metal gates that doubled as bug screens. As such, out-door sounds were NOT blocked, and except for no calls from Mammal predators this place sounds like the jungle. This includes magpies (which sing pretty)
and, in the place of hyenas and or monkeys, kookaburra birds which sound like an insane man laughing his head off in an insane asylum (and LOUD)…
my traveling companion, who is Australian, likes the sound — I learned later there is a popular Australian children’s song about the bird — Personally, I think the bird sounds a bit creepy, but my friend loves it …. anyway, one of those was in the back garden and between it and the heat, I woke up at 5am. I later learned another name for it is “the Bushman’s Alarm Clock” because they tend to go NUTS, and loudly, at 5am.
Also, before I started the walk I was very specific with the park staff about how I had bad hips and knees and needed to know if there’s be any serious amounts of stairs and or climbing along the way… suffice it to say they lied when they said no difficult stairs and that the whole thing was well paved throughout. There weren’t a LOT of spots like this, but if I were actually handicapped I’d be seriously pissed off… as it was it just slowed me down for a bit.
………. a whiskey bar,
From there, we connected to the train (which should have started at Central Station, but for the construction)
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