Another road trip, just Tom and I

So after about 16 weeks spending time with other people not just Tom i was time for some "us" time. I know what your thinking, this is starting to sound like a relationship. We'd planned to get a car for 3 days to drive from Melbourne to Sydney via Canberra and a few other places. I picked the car up from Melbourne airport early before heading back to the hostel to pick up Tom and the bags. This plan had a flaw, me not being drivings greatest fan as well as driving through a really busy city at lunch time. I got lost for roughly 2 hours and stressed is not the word. I grabbed Tom and we headed to Sydney. We'd planned to stop in a town just south of Canberra, this in the end didn't happen because we thought just get to Canberra and then we could have all day driving around the city and seeing the sites before heading onto Sydney and the Blue mountains. We stayed in a formula one hotel which was quite nice but we had to wake the receptionist up at a little gone 12 in the night because the machine we used to check in stopped working. We slept rather heavy that night as we had been driving since about 1.
The next day we went straight to the tourist information centre and found all the free things to do in city. Tom wanted to visit the war memorial museum which was really cool and interesting but as it was still early in the morning and neither of us had eaten anything i was a little restless and my mind wasn't in a learning or strolling mode, if I'm honest i just wanted a cup of coffee and a bite to eat. The drive through Canberra itself is really nice, the city itself has only been there for 90-something years so everything is really new, clean and well organised. I eventually got my coffee and bite to eat so stopped nagging Tom. We went to the National arts museum but because they only thought to put about 25 parking spaces we couldn't find anywhere to park and didn't actually get to go in, Tom was rather disappointed, but me I'm not art farty at all and don't get all the finger painting thing selling for hundreds of thousands of pounds.
We hit the road again for a fairly short drive to Sydney, the scenario was beautiful if not sometimes baron. We arrived at about 5pm so hit rush hour square on which was fun as you can imagine. We drove across the Harbour bridge which is a great bridge as bridges go of course, saw the opera house which is also great and an iconic building. We managed to get down to Bondi beach, parked outside MacDonald's to use their wireless Internet and found a hostel in the Blue mountains. I also popped into a hostel and booked a four night stay about 2 minutes walk from the beach for when returned a day later. All the organising being done it was time to drive up to the Blue Mountains, it's about a 2 hour drive west of the city. We got there about a 8ish and found the hostel we planned to stay in, checked in, threw the bags in the room then went for a pint and a pizza.
We got up early the next day and drove about 5 minutes to the most famous attraction in the blue mountains, a rock formation called the three sisters (picture below). It was a windy day so we didn't hang around long before moving onto the next attraction which was a few rides and a walk around the rain forest. They had a gonadal car that went across the valley, past a waterfall and gave you a different view of the three sisters rock formation. The next ride we went on was the old miners railway where they used to mine for gold. At the steepest part of the ride it 52 degrees which even going about 20 miles an hour is a scary experience. Once we'd hopped off the ride we walked around the valley floor looking at the mining exhibitions and watching a few videos. We also looked at the flora and fora that lived in the area. In order to get out of the valley we got the last ride of the day back to the visitor centre which was a lot like a ski lift and went about as fast although we did manage to get another perspective on the three sisters.
We'd popped into town for some fish and chips before moving onto our next destination which was to be a waterfall, this is going to sound really stupid so please excuse me. We managed to find the car park for the water fall but not the water fall! I know how stupid are we. So instead of going to see some water fall Tom and i sat in the car and played a cross word, which was a fun and made me feel even more stupid, happy days!
That spot being left behind forever we headed back to Sydney this time driving slowly taking in all the views as we come off the mountain range. Fairly impressive i must say.
We got back to the hostel in Bondi while it was still light so we popped up to the shop and got something for tea. We dropped the car back the next morning which was as much of a palaver as picking it up but i won't go into that for Tom's sake!
Photos - Tom and I driving into Sydney

Driving over the Harbour bridge

The drop from the gonadal car

Three sisters