Purple Mountains II

Friday 22nd December

A delightful nights sleep at the YHA left me refreshed and ready for more today. The hostel is so well equiped, I had bought myself some breakfast at the local supermarket yesterday. Also worth a mention is my purple shopping bag for about 40p. Most backpackers seem to have one to put their food in (I remembered this tip from New Zealand backpacking). However everyone elses seem to be in green or blue, mine is purple so there. I was happy. My Blue Mountains train ticket included unlimited trips on the rail network throughout the Blue Mountains so I was ready to exlore, however not all went to plan. The first station where I had planned to do a walk was not very well signposted though I did manage to find the tourist information centre which was a good 2k out of town, where they directed me to the walk. Due to bush fires the short cut was cut off perhaps thats why they called it a short cut. So I went the long cut, but that was also cut off, perhaps I should have cut off today completely. Some two hours later I arrived back at the train station to go further up north to explore more of the mountain villages. I ended up in Mount Victoria where I had lunch and misread the trains back, so had a good two hours to play with before decending back to the hostel. It was just one of those days…but I did get my first Christmas greeting today from a shop keeper, “Merry Chrissy” he said in his strongest Aussie Accent, shame he didn’t call me Sheila either.