Carrington Hotel, Katoomba:
Um. There’s a billiards room here,
a fact in which I just delighted on my way back from the bar. And the doorknobs sit about five feet off the floor, leaving some (Tim included) to wonder just how kids might escape from a room on fire. There are chairs everywhere, and plush velvet couches with cushions on every side.
Two stone maidens grace the front steps, just underneath and out from the plantation columns that shore up the ceiling above the front patio (I like to call it the smoking area) where I now sit.
This is one of those old school places your parents used to tell you about. Straight out of Savannah, Georgia,
the kind where all the trim is gilded and every stairway carpeted.
The kind of place where old codgers wonder just how to get down to the brasserie and just what to make of the young American chap giving them painfully detailed directions.
This is the Carrington. In Katoomba, a little town in the Blue Mountains west of Sydney. And it’s under renovation. They were painting outside today when we arrived, fresh in off the train from Sydney.
We dropped our bags,
ate a quick lunch
(best veggie burgers in all of Australia) and headed down the main drag (aptly called Katoomba St.) for to take in a slice of the splendor that is the Blue Mountains.
After a brief jaunt we came to the lookout at Echo Point. In the visitor center we were told that the maps were shoddy and even now up for revision, and that we should pay close attention to their verbal directions instead. Actually, this is not what they told us at all – but they should have.
We took in the views, which were, to say the least, phenomenal. Spectacular even. Sheer sandstone cliffs dropping off to green forests, forded by slow-moving gondolas. The Three Sisters sat in silent silhouette, a titillating testament to geologists the world over.
We hiked down to the cliffs, continuing toward the (I kid you not) Megalong Valley floor. The stairs were steep and mostly stone, the railings a real relief for my rapidly palpitating ticker.
These were the kind of steps one would really not wish to slip on. After a daring descent
we reached the bottom, and followed the trail to the North along their feet, backtracking toward town. Cockatoos cawed from above, and the canopy above us spoke in remembrance of a sun it had not seen for hours. We overtook a small group of Europeans, promptly leaving them in the dust.
And then came the ascent. It was, to be sure, a wicked ascent. Upward we climbed, past waterfalls and trickling streams, over bridges, and up, yes, up, more steps. On and on we climbed, like Rutherford the Brave on his valiant quest to meet the mighty Icculus. As we climbed the sunlight came back to us in vague shades until finally, just when I thought I could climb no more, we reached the top, the pinnacle, the apex, the penultimate orgasming peak that was . . .
. . . rather anticlimactic, oddly enough. Trees blocked the view from the quote unquote lookout, and a homeless man found brief moments of respite between trompers on a sandstone ledge.
And yet the fact remained that we had done it! And then Maya went for a run. JK. Tim and I had a beer,
(well, OK, two)
followed by massages for all, and finally, dinner. Ta! Ta!
