Weekend Report

Friday I headed out to the Blue Mountains, a national park a couple of hours outside of Sydney. It reminded me a bit of the mountains in northern New England, only these forests smell like eucalyptus and are full of lizards and tropical birds. I took the train to Katoomba and hiked around (here they call it "bushwalking" instead of hiking) for a few hours, stopping to see the famous Three Sisters rock formation. Apparently there is a long track record of people wandering off the trails and getting lost in the Blue Mountains (recent example here) and I can see why- despite the abundance of tourists once you follow a trail into the woods for fifteen minutes or so, there's nobody around. So I made sure to stick to the trails and was back in Sydney in time for schnitzel and bier at a German restaurant.

Saturday was Halloween: I was very glad that the timing of my trip allowed me to attend Kris and Rodd's legendary Halloween party in Sydney. They really pull out all the stops when it comes to food and decor- check out the witch finger cookies and the meatloaf zombie Barbie that Kris created. I dressed as David Bowie from Labyrinth, which was a lot of fun, although my costume may have been more authentic had I been bold enough to shove a zucchini down my stretch pants. Kris and Rodd came as Dolly Parton and Kenny Rogers and they looked great, and a lot of other guests had fabulous costumes as well. Halloween is starting to become more popular in Australia, but it is still largely viewed as an American holiday. Some pics:



Sunday we cleaned and recovered from the party, watched a bunch of episodes of The Big Bang Theory (love it!) and met up with a couple of Sydney Metafilter members at a very townie pub. Overall, it was a great way to spend my last weekend in Australia.