Blue Mountains

For our 2nd anniversary on Nov 19, we went to the Blue Mountains, about 2 hrs west of Sydney by train. Like the Blue Mountains near Washington DC where we live, there's some "blueness" involved, but not a whole lot of "mountain." Nevertheless it is still beautiful. Now, Courtney read somewhere that the 'blue' comes from the ever present fog, which comes and goes several times per day. They appear blue from the vapors from eucalyptus trees, which happen to appear this color in the spectrum.

You can read more about this spot at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Mountains

We stayed at the Carrington hotel in Katoomba, which is right across the street from the train station. [Interesting fact: just like in America, many locations, towns, rivers and other geographic features are named as the indigenous peoples called them thousands of years ago. In America, it's Native American names. In Australia, it's aboriginal names. Katoomba means "cascading falling waters" in the aboriginal language.]