Trifter

Blue mountains, the oasis of calm and cold are situated about 65km from the heart of Sydney. It’s a national park which offers spectacular views, bush walks, waterfalls and wildlife. You can get there by car or by public transport. It is much easier to go by train, since the highway from the city is often crowded. The journey by train takes aprox. 2 hours one way.

Image via Wikipedia

Many agencies offer one or several days trip to Blue mountains, but the price is usually unnecessarily high. Why to pay hundreds when you can pay just 20 bugs? So don’t buy and Blue mountains trip, any hop on hop off bus ticket or any other special “convenient” deal.

Supposing you are in Sydney for a couple of days and you have some public transport ticket. Then just go to the train station (Central being the best) after 8.10 am and ask for a return ticket. At the same time, show that you have the ticket for public transport. I payed $15,40 for this off peak offer. Usually, you would pay $24,40 for a return ticket. Now, we have already saved 9 dollars.

When you get there, don’t prepay any all-day ticket, you will need it only a few times anyway, because the most beautiful things you can see are accessible by walk. Just get on a bus 686 and go to Echo point. You will pay $1,9. Then walk along the pathways (there are many, if you don’t want to buy a map, take a picture of it at the information stand). When you will have seen everything, you can just walk back to the train station (it’s very likely you will go from Katoomba to Leura anyway).

The same logic applies if you want to see some other part of the mountains. If you are not sure what to get, just ask local people (not turist information office), they will very kindly give you advise worth $100.

Good luck.