Australia's version of the Grand Canyon

So blogging and being a tourist is exhausting...but since I'm already two weeks(ish) behind on New Zealand I figured I'd never catch up if I slacked on Australia too. The real message here is: get excited for a lame blog post.

Today we woke up early and got to enjoy public transportation with all the school children (they all use public transportation to get to school instead of school buses). We headed out to the blue mountains...about a two hour train ride from the city. The fog was still pretty thick when we got there, but it made for some beautiful views!!! The name of the town we went to was Katoomba, and from there we walked to a lookout called Echo Point.

Ew...never mind the tennis shoes.

The fog over the valley...it was like a wall of fog. epic.

Andrea enjoying the view.

These three little beauties are known as the three sisters. Apparently  they are sacred to the aborigines and some chief turned three sisters into stone for some reason which I cannot at this moment recall....

Luckily my sister has yet to be turned into stone.

I'm telling. It's gorgeous...and my pictures sooo don't do it justice. But I refuse to be one of those obnoxious photographers that is ridiculous about getting the perfect shot. We overheard one today...and secretly laughed our bums off because he was soo obnoxious.

The valley. Fun fact: they are called the blue mountains and actually sometimes look kind of blue because the light filters weirdly through the oils that come off the gum trees.

The sista.

This picture is proof that the Queen and I basically hung out together....

I wanted to be one of their sisters...

I look like I'm ridiculously cold because I was ridiculously cold. We forgot to check the weather...

I think I may have posted this picture upside down...I'm so tired I can't tell. So if it appears water is gushing out of the ground that is not the case as this was just simply a waterFALL...in the direction that gravity intended.

Katoomba Falls....this pic was taken from the Skyway, a tram like thing that goes out across a canyon. way.awesome.

Me...standing on the glass floor of the tram. over 200m up.no big deal.

The view across the valley with the three sisters again.

More of Katoomba Falls. It was awesome. And I just kept taking pics of it.

So it had been raining. Imagine these stairs super wet. Ya it was a party.

The Skyway tram we came across on.

The bottom of the tram...which had a glass walkway....which you cannot see:)

Portrait session!!!!

Realizing that it had started raining. in the middle of our portrait session. on a trail in the middle of the woods. with only one umbrella.

The lesser known and less popular Stairway Falls.

This horrible photo which should have never been posted on the internet is simply to document how wet  we got, no thanks to our pathetic umbrella.

And of course once we got back to a building the SUN came out!!!

simply.stunning.

Tomorrow I head to orientation.....hopefully to get orientated:) And I think Andrea is headed to a Koala park. Both of us are secretly excited we don't have anything huge planned and sleeping in a little will be a welcome break. 

Archnemesis: Sydney buses

Andrea and I started our plan to cram touristy things in during her time in Sydney and everyone recommended taking a ferry out to Manly beach. So last night we carefully plotted our route through public transportation and crossed our fingers for no rain. It poured buckets and did some serious lightning last night but this morning dawned sunshiny and lovely. After a skype date with the fambam we ventured off into the world of Sydney public transport.

Within the first 15 minutes of our meticulously planned 4 hour journey the bus had zoomed right past us, as we weren't paying attention and apparently standing at the bus stop isn't enough and you have to flag down the driver? or do a secret dance? or jump in front of the bus? (I will experiment and keep you posted on which of these methods actually work) So we walked instead, got to the train station and the train we got on had "limited stops" and unfortunately the stops it was limited to did not include the one we wanted. We watched our stop fly by, got off at a later stop and came back to the one we wanted. From there we got on ferries and it was smooth sailing. Two ferries later....we arrived.

Wanna see what we saw from the ferries? The view from the trains not so exciting, so you're not missing anything there. And the view from the bus.....well I'd share it if we had actually ridden the bus. But alas...

So this is the famed harbor bridge....and apparently I can't take a straight picture. But no worries it doesn't actually slope like this!

The closest Sydney has to Disneyland.......ya they totally fail in the theme park department. (check out the creepster face. definitely not the happiest place on earth here!)

TADA!!!!! my first time seeing it....we both decided that although it is definitely cool, it looks better from a distance and it's not what we had imagined in our heads.

Those wee little, blurry dots on top of the bridge are people! You can do the harbor bridge climb....looks a little unsettling, and is apparently very expensive. So I might be getting my city views elsewhere.

This would be above bridge those peeps are climbing across. 

Awesome view of the bridge and opera house together. Yes it was cloudy....but the sunny beach is awaiting us!

City+opera house+harbor bridge= an amazing view

View of downtown Sydney.

 You're already jealous right??And all this was just getting there!!! We hadn't even gotten  to the main event yet! So while our public transportation exploration wasn't perfect....It was SO WORTH IT! Manly is such a fun beach town. They have cool shops and restaurants. (We ate at MOO burgers...they had kangaroo ones, but we were chicken and stayed with good ol' beef ones.) And we had just missed the Australian Open of surfing which is hosted at Manly...so heaps of surfers and swimmers as well. We are both pretty awesome at being beach bums so that is how we spent our afternoon:)

Beautiful beach....ruined by people turning unnatural shades of brown and old men in speedos (my personal fav was the one that said "Manly" across the butt...)

Ignore the intense TOMs tanline....

Pre-awkward splotchy sunburns....

Well an early morning planned off to the Blue Mountains tomorrow...so off to bed for me. More of New Zealand is dying to be shared....but I just want to sleep:)

Auckland

~!@#$%^&*()~!@#$%^&*()~!@#$%^&*()

......So that was a time machine (obviously.not a string of cursing!!!!) and we are now back to February 1st when I landed in Auckland!!!!

I had three days in Auckland. And as it was my first stop I was crazy excited and took a gazillion photographs. But for your sake I will try and narrow it down to the ones that are only passably bad:)

That first day I wasn't too jet lagged on arrival. I had managed probably about 6 hours sleep on the plane. So I got to my hostel, dropped of my bags, and started wandering. It is your typical big city. With museums, shops, art galleries, and harbors for a newly arrived American girl to wander in. And I am going to cram all three days into one post. Prepare for Auckland overload:

For all the Swanson's in my life...Look your famous!!! A street and a building named after you:) 

Random gathering of Asian elderly praying in the town center. literally.center.of.town.

Everywhere in NZ the town centers have clock towers....although 99% useless because of these crazy new things called watches and cell phones, still pretty to look at.

Say hello to my breakfast, lunch, and dinner:)

Auckland Museum...humungo building set on a hill over-looking the city. very cool. inside and out!

A view of the city from the museum.

Another one....and yes this was like the best weather I had while in Auckland.

A view that includes the Sky Tower. You can bungy, walk outside, or view the city from safely inside. I did none of the above as it was usually cloudy and I figured the views wouldn't be worth the money.

So the museum is in the Domain, a huge park in the center of Auckland and they have these beautiful greenhouses full of the coolest flowers ever. This awkward picture of my hand was to show you that the flowers were huge....but as you can tell it just turned into a weird picture of my hand with a flower in the background. fail.

More of the gardens.

Check out this FABulous lily pad. I wanted to have a party on it.

Coolest.coffee.shop.ever. On a major street corner in downtown Auckland. Just a little hut, then seating out on couches/benches under the tree. The building next door (covered in white/painted looking tent thing) was a condemned house/commune/unidentified building where totally chill people would wander out off and order coffee. Super cool peeps, super cool vibes, highly recommended.

Pretty/creepster cemetery also in the middle of Auckland. Literally there is like a freeway running over parts of it.

If you want you can lease parts of the cemetery......(:

Don't you want to live in a RAINBOW building??? "Ya, I live on the yellow floor."

View from my hostel window.

My wandering along a harbor checking out the boats.

So I started this thing where I wanted to show you exactly where my poor feet have wandered....so get excited for pictures of my feet practically everywhere!!!!!

epic staring off into space shot.

I picked out a boat for myself. (hint.hint.nudge.nudge.wink.wink. to anyone looking to buy me a boat!)

Pretty spectacular view of downtown Auckland if I do say so myself.

I thought the sky tower was really fun to take pictures of. I have like 50 more pictures if you think so too:)

This random lonely piano out on a wharf made me wish I had kept up with lessons all those years ago!!!!

Chilling at the Chinese New Year festival. And two feet away behind the danger tape is the man setting up the ridiculously long string of firecrackers (yep, the blurry reddish line that goes all the way across the grass). I felt uber safe.

oooooo.

aaahhhh.

I really wanted to take a ferry out one day to an island north of the city....but I missed my chance the first day and the weather never got nice enough again. But other than that I felt like I did the touristy aspects of Auckland justice. Little did I know it would be the last time I ever felt that way about a city in NZ:)