Mmm I have absolutely no photos of the drive from Canberra to Leura in the Blue Mountains. Other than petrol, I don't think we made any stops. We didn't leave Canberra until around 4pm, and the drive was 4 hours so we figured we should just drive straight through. Although I did try to get Hubby to stop at the Big Merino in Goulburn and The Dog on the Tuckerbox in Gundagai, but he wasn't playing along. I even sang "Along The Road to Gundagai" to him, I think that might have put him off even more.
image courtesy Sol bot
image courtesy AYArktos
Once Hubby had decided that Leura was our next stop, he had booked a hotel on his handy, dandy iPad, noting in the reservation that we would be a late arrival at 8:00pm (reception closed at 6:00pm). We pulled into the driveway just before 8:00pm, actually about 15 mins early. We called the after hours #, we tried the after hours intercom, we called central reservations, we called head office in Sydney, we sent emails, we even called another hotel in the same chain to see if they had a contact number. For 45 minutes we sat in the driveway with the engine running and the lights on (not very efficient or environmentally friendly, I know). Just has we were trying to decided whether to find another hotel or just skip the Blue Mountains altogether and drive straight to our friend's house in Sydney, the Manager called us back.
photo Leura Spires
He was most apologetic. He had seen our lights and heard our engine running, and had noticed we had been there for awhile. So he went to the office to check, the envelope with our room key was on the reception desk, he checked the voicemail and heard the increasingly frustrated messages from us. The receptionist had forgotten to switch the phone and intercom to night service. We grabbed dinner and then turned in for the night.