Blue Mountains and Sydney Cruelty-Free Festival

I went to the Blue Mountains on Saturday for another all day trip. It was basically a bit of hiking and staring at trees. Highlights were seeing the mountains (not actually blue- just a sort of mirage via eucalyptus leaves from afar) and going on the steepest railway in the world (traveling up a mountain backwards at 52 degrees), which was kind of epic. On Sunday, I decided I should go outside for a bit with my suite mate Jackie and pretend to be vegan for half an hour by visiting the nearby Sydney Cruelty-Free Festival. I was just curious about what there was there and Jackie is an animal studies minor, so she was curious, too (and we wanted to eat really good food). There were a few people there of interesting walks of life and many dogs, which was really nice. There were also the standard extremist groups, vegan pet food stalls, and human food stalls, as well as live music. We indulged in the human food and sat in the grass to listen to the 'grunge rock influenced' band. I got an Indian savory lentil donut thing and a sweet cardamom nut ball thing, which were amazing. The spices and flavors really pushed the appetizery foods over the edge of normal, but I can't really identify what those were besides delicious (like eyes popping out of your head delicious). Jackie got a vegan burger with beets, onions, and other vegetables, which was probably one of the best burgers (period) ever because of the variety of textures layered on top of one another- it was like all of my taste buds were singing. After, we split vegan cupcakes- Mandarin Walnut (weird) and Lemon Curd Earl Grey (REALLY amazing- actually tasted like lemon curd and earl grey). Late Sunday night, we celebrated one of the girls birthdays over cake. It was cute. In the meantime, I am looking forward to Thursday when I visit the Great Barrier Reef :)