We were up early in the morning on Saturday to take the train from Sydney to a small town called Katoomba, which is right in the middle of The Blue Mountains. The journey was only about two hours long, and we found the hostel easily after a short walk, so the morning was pretty stress-free.

When we arrived at the hostel we were told that they had a spare double room for the night, so they let us stay there for no extra charge even though we had only booked into a dorm. Once the guy had shown us around he gave us a map with walkig routes, and showed us a good short one to do in the afternoon.

Once we had settled in we went out to buy some supplies, then cooked up a massive pasta dish for lunch. We had every intention of going out for that walk, but our full stomachs, coupled with our early start catching up on us, led to us taking a nap for a few hours instead.

When we woke in the evening the place had started to fill up a little bit, with most people back from their hikes. The hostel was a lot colder in the evenings, but the main lounge had a nice fire going that everyone fought to huddle around. Amy drank some of the complimentary mulled wine whilst we both sat around reading our books. Someone put Interview with a Vampire on whilst we cooked our tea, so we watched a bit of that, then played scrabble before bed. Amy lost, but only because her letters were bad apparently.

Our room was freezing when we got to bed, but we put on a portable radiator and chucked some extra covers on and we soon warmed up.

The next day we woke up nice and early and got showers and breakfast, before preparing some food for the trek we had planned. Unfortunately the guy on the reception told us that someone had booked our double room for that night, so we had to move our stuff over to the dorm before we left that morning. Oh well, it was nice whilst it lasted.

It was only a short walk from the hostel to the edge of the national park, and pretty soon after we entered the woods we came out onto a clifftop viewing area where we could see for miles around. We took in the sights then continued on to a rock formation called 'The Three Sisters', where three columns stand out on the edge of a cliff. We walked around the viewing area and down towards The Sisters, then down a route comprised of "approximately 900 steps". Amy counted 870.

When we reached the foot of the path, we took a route back parellel to the way we had just been and walked directly below The Sisters. We stopped for some sandwiches along the way, as we had to build up our strength for the climb back up. Amy didn't count this time, but apparently there were 1040 steps.

The route back up was stunning, and allowed us some rest with viewing platforms every few hundred metres. My camera could just about take the strain when asked to take a photo of a waterfall from the 20th possible angle.

At the top we looped back around to where we had started, with the weather starting to look bleak off in the distance. We decided we would have time to take the scenic route home, but were proved wrong when the rain started to get heavy. We eventually got back to the hostel 5 hours after we left, well in need of a cup of tea and a doughnut.

Once we had dried off and warmed up, we spent the evening watching Primal Fear then playing Trivial Pursuit, but we were being bugged by some annoying girl who meant well, but wouldn't b***** off.

We went to bed cold again, and when we woke up we could see our own breath, but we managed to get up and pack our stuff in time for the journey to Canberra via Sydney.