Happy Mum's Day and Happy Birthday Jewell! We were all ready to go and at Thrifty by 7:30. Kate and I hung around on the streets (since 6 doesn't equal a 5-person car) as the rest of them went in to hire the car. We all crammed in and headed north to the Blue Mountains. Our first stop was the Olympic Park just outside of Sydney. It was neat to see but there wasn't much going on at 8am there. We all piled back in and our first stop in the Blue Mountains was Glenbrook at the information centre. We followed the Grand Circular Tourist Drive through the "mountains" to Wentworth Falls just outside of Katoomba. We didn't actually make it to the falls part but we went to two different lookouts. The first one was right near the car park with a good view of the area. The second lookout was a good trek through the bush, constantly going up and down small in/declines and jumping over rocks hoping not to roll an ankle. The view was good but it was work getting there and back. As we headed away from Wentworth Falls we were going to stop at the falls but missed the turn so decided to keep going. We met the Three Sisters in Katoomba, three large rock formations. Besides being pretty, they have heaps of spiritual significance for the aboriginal people. We decided to walk down to the lookout under the Three Sisters. We thought the last lookout was almost challenging, this one was a slow descend to a flight of stairs that went straight down! Going down wasn't too bad, it was the coming back up that was a little bit of work. The view was alright, pretty much the same as from up above, it was just that we were up close and personal with one of the sisters. Brendan and Fallon stopped in the gift shop to ask directions to Hunter Valley, a renowned wine area, but found out it would take us almost 3 hours to get there. It was almost noon already and we figured most places would close by 5pm. We then stopped in at the Heritage Centre where there was a small wine shop to ask them for suggestions. The guy working told us to go to Mudgee which wasn't far and had smaller, family owned wineries. Before heading out of town we stopped at a chocolate factory for some homemade chocolate. It was expensive and what I bought didn't last very long. We continued along the tourist drive for Mudgee making a quick stop at KFC for toasted twister lunch and at one more lookout. As we all piled out of our little clown car one of the other tourist there looked at us and laughed. We managed to stop at 5 different wineries in 2 hours. All were a little different with a unique cellar door for tasting. The workers were very nice and fun to talk to as well. Our last winery stop had gourmet cheese tasting as well, it can't get much better than that. We asked most of the wineries where a good place in town to eat was and they all said at one of the pubs, especially the Oriental Pub, so that's where we went. We got there around 5:15 but they didn't start serving dinner until 6 so we had plenty of time to decide what we wanted. The food was good and once we were finished, we had to head out of town for our 4 hour drive back to Sydney. Being the navigator I also became the roo watcher, we didn't want to have to walk back to Sydney. We were all pretty vigilant about it since on the way we say plenty of kangaroos, wombats and whatnots no longer moving alongside the road. We stopped in Lithgow to get petrol and stretch. We took the northern route of the tourist drive for change of scenery. Yes, it was dark so we couldn't see much but this route had heaps more curves and hills. We hadn't had our ice cream for the day yet so while driving through a random town Brendan spotted a Baskin Robins and we had to stop. Unable to find how to get into the car park for the strip mall we were forced to drive over a curb and park on a grassy area; we didn't see any no parking signs so of course it was legal. Once back into Sydney we had a little bit of trouble getting onto the right road but we got to drive over the Sydney Harbour Bridge, which was fun even though you can't see anything and we had to pay a high toll price. We eventually made it back to Kings Cross but after searching for a parking spot for a long time ended up parking in a parking garage that would cost heaps for over night parking. It was after 11pm by the time we got back and we were all tired from the day; we planned on meeting at 5:45am to make sure we got to the airport by 7am to drop off Fallon, Kate and Karen who had to attend class later in the arvo.