Thursday
Had an excellent sleep and were not cold at all, and awoke bright and early to go for some breakfast before continuing our touristing. Luckily, despite the rain last night, today was a bright and sunny day, if rather gale force windy.

We were hoping to go to the Common Ground café, as everyone has been raving about how great it is there for breakfast, but when we arrived, it transpired that it doesn't open for breakfast until 10am - lazy layabouts! So instead, we went to the café we frequented yesterday, home of the awesome Chai Latte which Hannah ordered again, and had some raisin toast and butter to fuel us up for the day. Nik then got jealous of the Chai Latte and ordered himself one after his coffee.

Went and got on the first tour bus of the day, with an excellent driver called Jimmy, and headed to Scenic World, which is a bunch of rides that go across, up and down some cliffs. Before we went in, we took a short walk to Katoomba Falls, and saw some lovely cascades - due to the rain last night the waterfalls were really spectacular. We also went to a cliff top lookout and saw some immense views as it was much clearer than yesterday. At Scenic World we took the Skywalk over to the other side of the rocks. The Skywalk is like a big cable car with glass sides and a see through bit on the bottom so you can look down as you travel along 300ft up or something. As it was a very windy day, it did swing about a fair bit, but that just gave us even better views of the Katoomba Falls from up high - apparently they were looking better today than they have for some time so we were lucky. We were also lucky as we were the only two people on the Skywalk, yet when we got to the other side, a large school party and two coach loads of Asian tourists had just turned up to ride it. On departure our luck continued as the girl selling tickets couldn't find the right option on the till so ended up giving us a dollar off each.

Next stop on the bus was Honeymoon Lookout, which had to be done for obvious reasons, and was a very nice viewpoint. We then took a short bushwalk along the cliff road and saw some incredible scenery - seriously the scale was incredible and exactly what we wanted to see in Australia. We also were lucky enough to see two types of parrots in the tree tops during our walk. Our finishing point was back at the Three Sisters, where we hopped on the bus to the Kiah Lookout. This took us via some fantastic lookouts to see the Leura Cascades which were really beautiful. However, we took the wrong path and ended up doing a better but longer route which took us further down the waterfall and through some amazing greenery and windy trails. The photos we got were amazing though. However, when it came time to try and find the next bus stop, we realized we were totally lost and no amount of map reading would help us. We went to the road and luckily two tree cutting men were sitting having their lunch so Nik asked them directions, but even using our map they couldn't work it out. In the end, one of the kindly tree cutters drove us in his truck to Leura, which was the next stop anyway - perfect! And what lovely people are here in the mountains!

Leura village is really pretty, lots of ferns and firs lining the streets. We went to an excellent place, which was called the Treasured Teapot and was a collection of over 3000 teapots owned by some eccentric man. This was attached to a shop called Bygone Beauties, which had lots of antiquities and chintzy modern junk to buy and also there was a tea shop there. Literally, this venue could have been created in Hannah's imagination. It was the chintziest little place ever - it made Nik fairly uncomfortable, although he was silenced by tea and scones with cream and jam (with they call Devonshire Tea in Oz btw - odd) which we got buy one get one free. It was very relaxing and there was a log fire too which made us sleepy. Notably, the ladies toilets were also amazing and in keeping with the shop (Hannah took a photo) and they had a big collection of golly toys (Hannah's mum would love!).

We then explored the lovely little Leura for a while, including the old fashioned sweet shop and artisan chocolate shop, and eventually settled for a hot chilli chocolate in the chocolate café. It was the best hot chocolate ever tasted, plus there were two excellent husky dogs there that Nik got to play with (he needed it as he had been following a Jack Russell round trying to stroke it unsuccessfully for a while).

We took the bus back to Katoomba in the afternoon and organised a trip to the Jenolan Caves for tomorrow. Nik also found a photography magazine for a dollar so is brushing up on his skills beforehand to make sure we get some good shots!

Went for dinner in the bar downstairs, and on the way in some woman asked if we were here to see the show, we said no, we just want some dinner. She then proceeded to tell us that we would have to pay as it was likely the show would be on while we were eating. Nik in no uncertain terms told her we were residents of the hotel and as such would not be paying to go into the dining room. She meekly withdrew, claiming she would have to sort this out with the management! Seriously, the try and charge you for everything here - not only did they overcharge us on dinner last night, but this afternoon, we realised they had overcharged us on the room and had to get that money back. Its funny how somewhere so inept can still be so charming though.

We eventually got dinner (Hannah - pumpkin, spinach and feta risotto, Nik - barracuda with beetroot salad and chips), although were unfortunate enough to see the start of 'the show'. It turned out to be something they were calling 'theatre sport' - basically improvised comedy sketches like whose line is it anyway. The teams were about 12 and the compere looked like a paedophile so we quickly made our retreat to our room for the night.