The Blue Mountains ARE actually Blue!

hey guys! now for an update on the weekend.
saturday: We woke up early on a saturday morning. That's a surprise. We took the bus to central station and got there probably about 7:45 or so. Problem: The train that we are supposed to take isn't running today because they are fixing the tracks from central station to penrith. Solution: They have an express bus to Penrith to make up for the trains. So first we take an hour long bus ride, then a little over an hour long train ride to Katoomba. Once we get to Katoomba we go to the Trolley Shoppe to confirm our caves tour for the next day. After that, we ate lunch at a little cafe that served Chinese food. It was probably one of the best meals I have had here. It just tasted so good. After that, we walked to the YHA (our hostel for the night) and checked in. Then we walked all the way to Echo Point. This time when we got to Echo Point, we could see the Blue Mountains and the Three Sisters. It was all very very pretty. We decided to do the 1000 steps down the Three Sisters. It was a lot of fun. Maria, Marissa, and I were walking faster than Blair and Jessi so we had to wait for them a lot. We took lots of pictures. Fortunately, we didn't see any snakes because Blair would have freaked out. We kind of met people on the walk that had proposed to each other 20 years earlier at a certain spot on the Blue Mountains. It was really cute because they brought their kids with them and kept telling them that this spot was famous and that the kids wouldn't be here if it weren't for that spot. When we got to the bottom of the really steep staircase, we walked the "rainforest" walk through the bush. We found streams and miniature waterfalls. We went off path down to the water and climbed around on the rocks. Since I'm the adventurous type, ofcourse that is something that I would do. At the end of our walk, we found this railway to take us back up. It was the fastest and steepest railway I have ever seen and there was nothing holding me in so I could have easily flown out. Before we got on it though, we found were the old railway was. It was interesting to learn a little bit about it, because it was something that we were not expecting to be there. After that, we took a bus back to Katoomba and went out for dinner at the Carrington Inn. The Carrington Inn is a pub right next to the Carrington Hotel. The Carrington Hotel is this really famous and expensive hotel of Katoomba. They used to have balls there and stuff. On Saturday night we did not really do too much. Katoomba is not a city for four college students to roam around.
Sunday: On Sunday, we woke up and went to this really cute little cafe that reminded me of the Oregon Trail called Common Ground. I felt like we were out in the west somewhere in like the 1800s. It was adorable. I ordered the maple pancakes. They were probably the best pancakes I have ever had. They were wheat pancakes! After that, we went back to our hotel and caught our bus that we were suppose to take out to the caves. When we got to the caves we found out we had two hours until our adventure began. Instead of buying a pass to check out another cave, we went and walked around this really pretty lake and river and through the brush. Blair was freaking out the entire time because the path kept giving us warning signs about snakes. So we did not fully complete the path and took the short one. The lake was a bright turquoise blue which is something that I have never seen before in a lake. From a sign, we discovered that it has to do with the limestone in the water. Sometimes you can see platypus in there but we did not see any. At the end of our walk, we found a cave that you could walk through for free. It was huge. I loved the rock formations and all the designs in them. Then 1:00 came around. We bought the boys that went last week their Plug Hole shirts and then we each bought one too. It had a map of the tour that we went caving through. It really isn't a very cute shirt but it is more about the experience. We signed the waiver and got into our gear. This included a suit, a harness, and a helmet. We took a bus to the top of the mountain and repelled down 9 meters. It was a lot of fun but harder than I was expecting. Then we went into the caves. There were small holes to climb through, things to climb around, and more. I loved doing that. In the "chapel" of the cave, the guides made us turn our lights off. It was so dark that I felt like I was blind. It was really freaky. One fun fact about the cave. The first person to discover this cave was a woman, Jane Falls. She signed her name in the cave as J. Falls because she did not want men to think a woman had discovered the cave and her name probably would have been rubbed off. It was wrong for a woman to be out of the kitchen. On the way back, there were two guys on the train causing chaos because they were swinging knives. It was kind of scary because they were right below us and we could hear them arguing. The train was probably stopped for 30 minutes at a stop. The police came. Then they could not find the knives. It was a mess but eventually we made it home safely. Ill update you on my week later tonight.