Christmas Ornaments at @bearone's place

I wanted to type this out while it was still relatively relevant, but time marches on and plans for the next Team Australia Christmas Party should sort of start being organised soon.

Plus I will tag @trudeehunter here who wanted to know more about what happened.

Getting There

From the outset, I have to admit to not having much travel experience, so a LOT of this particular journey was new to me. However, I needed a new adventure and I wanted to stretch my shrinking comfort zone.

I live in Adelaide and the party was in the Blue Mountains of Sydney; they are very beautiful, if you get the chance, I can highly recommend seeing them.

There was a mix up with the dates and flight booking meaning that I would have to fly to Sydney a day earlier than everyone else and stay at @bearone's place until the airbnb place, affectionately known as "Baller House" became available the next day.

The weather on the day of the flight was both wet and windy, which made it difficult for my inexperienced taxi driver to even see me, let alone pick me up. He nearly crashed twice on the way to the airport too! I somehow managed to cut my finger on the plastic trays they have at airport security as well. I wasn't impressed.

The weather pushed the flight back 30 minutes on top of everything else, but we were eventually in the sky and I was on my way to Sydney.

Wet and windy in Adelaide

Flying over the Adelaide coastline

*
It was an uneventful flight

Sydney

One of the things that people in Sydney won't acknowledge, or even seem to be aware of, is how humid Sydney can be.
The service people, cleaners (janitors) and transit staff, can seem rather defensive, despite my excusing myself before asking which train to catch (Google was wrong!) or where the nearest bin was. Maybe that was just my perception.

The carriages at the ends of the trains are "quiet" carriages, meaning that you need to either wear headphones or be very very quiet. I found out the hard way after disturbing someone sleeping on one of the lower levels. Oops.

The trip up to the Blue Mountains can take anywhere from an hour and a half, to 2 hours depending on delays in the train service.

Meeting Bearone

Upon arrival, I was pleasantly greeted by @bearone, who quickly showed me where I would be staying and offered me an opportunity to freshen up as I was drenched in sweat from the humidity.
()
@bearone and myself
Later we would chat for about 6 hours, before her husband Ben came home. We ran through emotions that matched the ever-changing weather outside, from heated to heavy rain and power-draining lightning strikes and cracks of thunder, but eventually ending in a beautiful double rainbow that arced across the sky so wide I couldn't fit it into camera view. I'd made new friends. After dinner that was delayed by the power outage, Ben and I bonded further after unlocking a few levels of a game called 'Rayman'.

The beautiful rainbow

Baller House

The next day, after a Breakfast Of Steemians, I made my apologies and I chose to catch the train up to Katoomba to check out Baller House before the others got there. Arriving in Katoomba, I had a light lunch and the best milkshake in a long time. I caught the wrong bus, went in a loop and started again.
I decided to walk the rest of the way to Baller House. Halfway there, the skies opened up and I ducked into a Fish and Chip shop as the rain poured down heavily.

When it stopped I continued my journey, seeing mist coming off of the mountains was a shock after the heavy rains, but not as eerie as the steam coming off of the hot roads, something you don't really see in Adelaide.

In order to get into Baller House, I had to ring the owner to tell me how to get the key out of the it's key-coded storage place and let myself in. You can see more in the Baller House Tour video.

I went back to the Fish and Chip shop / general store and managed to pick up a few snacks and easy to cook meals while I waited for the others.

The Party

The party was delayed until 2pm on the Saturday, which was a blessing in disguise as it allowed @bearone and her husband to go down the mountain get the food supplies and make last minute preparations.

And boy was there FOOD!


The attention to detail was amazing. Notice the food labels?

The weather decided to turn nasty...
(

)

... but it only lasted about and hour because the weather can change very quickly in the Blue Mountains.

One hour later...

We all had a great time anyway engaging in karaoke, video games, music, dancing, drinking, eating and of course discussing
all things steem related. :D

A friendly Karaoke battle underway...

At some point I managed to get a leech caught on my finger, but @mattclarke came to my rescue with a cigarette lighter.
The Steem Monsters reward card called "Vampire" had just come out so I was making "life leech" jokes.

We were all given party tote /swag bags that have the Steem logo on them, with handmade and personalised Christmas ornaments, (You can see mine here) chocolates, a bottle of wine, calendars for 2019 and powerbanks. Now, that's love!

We came back the next day just to unwind, talk about things, and deal with the left over food. (I did my best, honest!).
But soon it was time to leave and I said goodbye to everyone before planning the long trip back to Adelaide.

It was a fantastic event and I hope the** 2019 Team Australia Christmas Party**, to be held in Adelaide this time,
is just as good if not better!

Thank you for reading.

Those that attended in no particular order: @bearone, @mindbodyspirit, @mattclarke, @o07, @vincy, @jay.ell @travelgirl, @shaidon, @chrisdavidphoto and @choogirl.