Festival of Mary: The Weekend

One never needs an excuse to visit the Blue Mountains an hour and a 1/2 from Sydney, but sometimes a little nudge such as the lure of a surprise party doesn't go astray.

So when Blue Mountains Mary's husband J put out the word that he would like Mary's blogging pals to be at her surprise party Fairlie and I couldn't resist. Well, that is after we considered the possibility of tearing the very fabric of time and space by mixing the blogging world with the real world. Fairlie has this potential dilemma all covered in her post here.

So on Friday night Firegazer, the kids and I met up with Fairlie at our fabulous rented house in Katoomba. Above is a pic of the yard the kids had to play in. Such a struggle.

On Saturday, in an effort to avoid being detected in town, we avoided the main shopping strips and went to lovely Blackheath for our morning coffee. The Victory Cafe must've known I was coming and reserved a table in my name...

To further avoid detection we hotfooted off to the Mt Tomah Botanic Gardens. Stunning. When we mentioned to the kids that there was a Waratah festival on Padawan Learner exclaimed "What? The Waratahs are here? Where?". He was a little dismayed to find that the festival was about the NSW floral emblem, not his favourite Rugby team.

Later that afternoon the kids relaxed in the spa putting up with the views available from our rented house.

Then it was time to surprise Mary. We took along this box which contained gifts from many bloggers from around Australia who were unable to get to the party. We knew Mary had cottoned on that there was some sort of surprise party afoot but we were pretty confident that she didn't know about the blogger angle.

Fairlie and I, along with The Poolboy and Firegazer had a blast at Mary's party. We nimbly fielded questions about blogging and met some fabulous people, including one of my favourite bloggers, Pretty Essential.

The next day, after dropping into a fabulous recovery BBQ at Mary's house, we went of to the Circquinox Festival at Norman Lindsay's old house in Faulconbridge. The EasternMaxes had been there before but the addition of the fabulous circus acts in the gardens was a real treat for all of us.

All in all, a great weekend. A big thank you to Mary's husband J for organising such a mammoth event and giving us a nudge to visit the beautiful Blue Mountains. And thank you to Mary for welcoming us to her home to meet her family and friends.

The Lovely Blue Mountains

Mary and Sharyn live in the most beautiful place. The only other time I've been to the Blue Mountains was a quick day trip to check out the main tourist spots. This trip we took a more leisurly pace.

I checked out the shops and did my bit for the local economy.

And we took in the scenery from a different vantage point this time.

There is still SO much to see and do so were are definitely planning more weekends up there to explore.

Fairlie, S, Domestic Goddess & others - I think we need to plan a girls weekend, hit the day spas, the shops and catch up with the Blue Mountains bloggers...