A long weekend in the Blue Mountains – Part 1

So planning a holiday is a post-COVID world is tricky at the best of times. Even more so is planning a holiday for the long weekend in a post-COVID world. In order to make this happen for myself, I booked in March for June accommodation…..and dining.

Our journey begins at Lilianfels Blue Mountains resort and spa. This is located at Echo Point at Katoomba – very near The Three Sisters.

Now, under normal circumstances the resort and surroundings would be pack to the rafters with tourists from all over he globe. However, for this long weekend in particular – half of Sydney seems to have turned up. The rest of Sydney seems to have headed to the warmer climate of Bryon Bay.

Anyway, back to the resort. Room is fine etc etc. but I’m here to talk about the food and drink situation. After our 3pm arrival, we settled in at the in-house cocktail bar for a drink before heading into town for dinner.

I started with a vodka, watermelon, apple and mint cocktail -Bloody Doubloon. My partner had a Badlands Pale Ale (Local produce). Not a bad welcome. The bartended was friendly and very much in control of the entire space. Good to see that he was able to stay calm in such a busy time.

For dinner, we then headed into town to a known local spot – The Avalon Restaurant and Cocktail bar.

Whilst it wasn’t especially designed to withstand the cold, the atmosphere more than made up for it. We were in the downstairs piano bar. The pianist of the evening was funny and talented and put on a good show.

Upon arrival, we of course sampled the cocktail bar. I ordered a classic lime Daquiri and my partner ordered a Mai Tai.

Not the fanciest cocktails, I’ve ever had. But the hospitality was nice and friendly and we were able to move from the cocktail bar to the restaurant with our drinks…without any fuss. I’m always grateful for that.

Our pianist played pop, classical, jazz and even Disney mixes to add some atmosphere for the evening. After a couple of drinks, all us audience members started to think we were musical experts and could guess the tunes. I’m sure you can probably guess how wrong we all were. 🙂

Dinner started with Baked Camembert and honey glazed focaccia bread. Now, I’m not usually a honey fan – but I was very pleasantly surprised by this. I really liked it. My Partner suggested that my dislike of honey was incorrectly created from simply trying crap honey….he may be right. Perhaps after this, I’ll give honey another go…and do it right.