2 Days, 3 Cities, too many hours on a train!

What an awesome weekend.  On Friday, I met up with my friend Katelynn in Sydney.  We walked all around the "Rocks" and got a beer at a rooftop been garden overlooking the harbour.   Afterward we walked around a trendy area of the city known as Surry Hills.  Very much a cosmopolitan and "liberal" area, great restraunts and shops align the roads in a quieter, residential neighborhood of the city.  The most interesting part of the night, was going to a Thai restaurant for dinner, and getting an entire (head, tail and all) fried fish on a plate!  Saturday started early with a train ride up to Newcastle, which is about 2.5 hours north of Sydney up the New South Wales coast.  Although it was a cold, and drizzly day, Newcastle was still a beautiful town on the sea.  A group of  eight of us spent the day exploring the town, taking pictures of the coast, eating good fish and chips, and seeing a (cue viral youtube video ) double rainbow!  Not to sound sappy, but there was also a fantastic sunset (half the sky grey and overcast, and half the sky bright orange)!  After a cold, yet great day in Newcastle, me and some of the other guys took the long train ride back to central Sydney.  After spending 7 dollars on a tiny Maccers (Aussie for Mcdonalds) chicken sandwich, we got over the price tag shock with some good aussie beer.  Crashing at the University of Sydney for the night (public transport back to Macquarie is a pain late at night), I woke up early Sunday morning to drive out to the Blue Mountains with some other  buddies from Macquarie.  The drive up to the Blue Mountains was a good two hours, but was very pleasant driving through smaller communities outside the maze of Sydney.  The Blue Mountains are basically a huge range of massive 2000 foot cliffs and ridges packed with eucalyptus trees.  A blue haze is formed from all the oils that leech from the trees!  Needless to say, it is pretty incredible.  We followed the main road for quite a ways through the mountains, stopping at various hiking paths and look out points along the way.  One of which was a massive 900 step steep patch climbing down the side of one of the cliffs.  Anyway, after a long but great weekend hopping all over the place, I am back at the uni about to confront reality with a history paper =(.  So I really should end my rambling here and get to work...