5* Westin for 2 nights as it was a special weekend. We have both been earning quite well during our time in Melbourne so we decided to take a break from dorm rooms for once! The room was fabulous and Sydney is such a beautiful city! We strolled through Sydney in the afternoon, ate fish and chips at Darling Harbour and then in the evening we went to see 'Priscilla, Queen of the Desert: The Musical' at the Lyric Theatre in Star City, the Casino. We had front row seats and the show was one of the most outrageous, entertaining and funniest musicals we have seen and it had two characters from the film in it which was a real bonus. The strawberry daiquiri in a flashing red cocktail glass which we drank during the interval was equally as amusing!The following morning, Saturday, we had a big gourmet breakfast in the elegant Strand Arcade before heading up to the jewellers for our half day ring workshop. We were met by our jeweller who showed us all the different options for designing our rings. We both decided to go for platinum bands (Bi's engagement is also platinum) and after choosing our designs we were provided with an overview of how we would make the rings. Everything was to be done by hand.
We were handed a piece of metal that looked rather like the 'lead pipe' from the Cluedo board game and then started the process of turning this shabby piece of platinum into our wedding rings! We were both responsible for making each other's rings and naturally most of the pressure was on Ash to get Bi's one perfect! Bi on the other hand had the task of making a ring for Ash that was almost big enough for her to wear as a bracelet!! We began by putting the platinum through a mill to elongate the metal, setting the right thickness and width. 
After this we put the now flattened, straight pieces of metal into a circular vice that bent the metal strips into a ring shape... they looked very crude at this point! We then heated the metal up under a small blowtorch
to soften it and then hammered the rings into shape around a conical metal tube. The next step was to saw off the overhanging edge before using melted platinum leaf to solder the two ends of the ring together to form a complete circle. It was exciting to see our rings start to take shape although they still looked incredibly ugly! As instructed, Ash made Bi's perfect! Bi unfortunately had made Ash's wonky and so she had to cut it, rework it and resolder it..oops!
Once both rings were soldered, we took a break and had a nice lunch. We wolfed it down as we wanted to keep going with making our rings. 
After lunch we faced the very long process of filing and polishing the rings to bring the colour and finish out of the platinum. It felt never ending as we went through numerous different grades of files (which looked a bit like emery boards) before finishing the rings on an electric polisher. The rings were gleaming and almost unrecognisable against the ugly piece of dull metal we first started with. It was very exciting.
The whole process took about 4.5 hours and it was fantastic to be so involved in making each other's rings, especially since we did it all by traditional hand methods. We left the rings with the jeweller to be engraved on the inside with our names and wedding date. We spent the rest of the afternoon wandering around the city and Chinatown before returning to collect our rings in the early evening and we celebrated their completion with a glass of champagne. 
We could not stop opening up the box and looking at them. That evening we had a meal at The Astral, a posh restaurant on the top floor of Star City (the casino), overlooking Sydney Harbour. We arrived a little early for our reservation so we ducked into the casino for 10 minutes and Ash managed to accumulate a few winnings at the roulette table that bought us a very nice bottle of wine at dinner!
Blue Mountains, a beautiful forested national park full of deep gorges and with a slight blue haze (given off by the Eucalyptus apparently). We stopped at a lookout over the Wentworth Falls and Jamison Valley before heading onto Katoomba, the chief town of the Blue Mountains National Park to find some accommodation for the night. Katoomba is pretty as Australian towns go and we were hungry when we arrived so we stopped into a tea shop for a cream tea. Disappointingly a cream tea in Australia comes with whipped cream as they don't have clotted cream! Afterwards we had a ramble through the town before setting off to look for accommodation. 
We found a gorgeous little bed and breakfast called Windradyne with spectacular views across the whole national park and only walking distance to the area's most famous landmark, the Three Sisters which is a formation of three towering sandstone peaks.
icnic dinner. We sat ourselves on a bench overlooking the Blue Mountains and there we sat and watched the sunset with a bottle of red wine, dips, olives, crusty bread, tomatoes and salad. It was bliss! As the sun set, we packed up and then walked down and around the Three Sisters before heading back to our B&B for some complimentary port (for Ash!) and tea and biccies (obviously for Bi!). That evening Bi forced Ash to sit up and watch a very girly film called 'The Notebook'. His preparation for marriage is complete!.jpg)
After Pigg's Peake we headed on to Tyrell's, a spectacularly located winery with sweeping views over the Hunter Valley hills and vines. The wine was also excellent and after a thorough tasting we decided to splash out and purchase a really excellent bottle of the 2004 VAT 8 Shiraz (but not to be opened for about 5 years!). Next stop was at a small, boutique winery located at the beautiful Peppers Guesthouse..jpg)
Audrey Wilkinson winery for a stunning spot to have our lunch. First things first however, Ash completed another tasting and bought yet another bottle of wine before we sat at a picnic table and enjoyed our food with stunning views over the valley. That afternoon we visited Lindemans and Rosemount Estate but found them to be a bit big and unfriendly (not to mention that their plonk wasn't all that good either). Next stop was to Peppertree winery where we tasted some lovely wines. We were gutted to be in a position where we couldn't fit anymore wine into our luggage and so we settled for a very pretty empty bottle that Bi wants to use for her olive oil!!.jpg)
The restaurant itself is a lovely old slab cottage dating back 200 years and reminded us of some of the old National Trust cottages we regularly visited back in England. We finished our meal with tea and coffee in the quaint lounge (which smelt like an old library). Bi is completely in love with the place. .jpg)
o Newcastle which is where we take our flight back to Melbourne. Newcastle was a tiny and rather unexciting town so we decided to continue driving to Port Stephens, a beach town just north of Newcastle. We wandered the town and had lunch by the harbour before returning to Newcastle to catch our flight back to Melbourne. 
