Hunter Valley

Happy Friday America! You’ve survived another work week… be sure to reward yourself this weekend.

Disclaimer: This post is exceptionally long, since I didn’t recap yesterday’s adventures. Proceed when you have time.

Before I move into today’s tales, allow me to catch you up on yesterday prior to Michael Buble. It was another wet and dreary morning, and yesterday was by far the coldest day we experienced because it was extremely windy. So much in fact, I had to grab my hat several times to keep it from blowing off. As such, we decided to find as many things to do indoors as possible.

We started with breakfast at the Rocks Cafe and then headed to Paddy’s Market where word on the street was you could get “proper Uggs” for $75, the cheapest around. Well, that was a disappointing trip, however it was fun to see Chinatown in Sydney. Paddys Market is like all the street vendors of Chinatown NY brought under one roof. However, there are no shady back allies or rooms to in to get the really good knock offs b/c this Chinatown only has really good Uggs knock offs. Thanks to the internet accessed via the iPhone, I was able to reveal that these Uggs were not in fact real. I haven’t given up hope on finding them, however, I’m really going to scour the Uggs I’ve seen at shops around the hotel, prior to purchasing, if at all. I’m almost close to saying the best way to get the real deal, is simply to buy them from distributors in the States. Be sure to stay tuned to see how the Ugg drama unfolds.

After Chinatown, we decided to do the Sky Tower, Sydney’s tallest building which looks like a big steel pole with a gold marsh mellow on the end. It was cool, but really not worth the money. (Have I mentioned how outrageously expensive this city is?!) The John Hancock building and Empire State building are better in my opinion.

In the cab ride on our way to Chinatown, we did pass some places that I had noted in my Formers Guide, so after spotting them from the top of the Sky Tower, we realized how close we were and headed over to St. Mary’s Cathedral and the Australian Museum. While impressive, St. Mary’s Cathedral was undergoing some serious renovations in preparation for the Pope’s visit for World Youth Day in 38 days. Our tour guide today pointed out that the Cathedral has a crypt underneath. I was bummed we didn’t realize that yesterday as that would have been something neat to go down and see (in my mind I’m envisioning Divinci Code, so it may actually not be as neat). Moving along, we walked down to the Australian Museum. It contained a large skeleton exhibit of various animals that live in Australia. It was pretty cool. We then moved to the large gem exhibit, featuring all the different gems and ores mined in various parts throughout the country. Quite impressive. On the third level, there was a large bird exhibit (these people really love their birds around here), insect and spider exhibit (iiiiccccckkkk!) but then, had a wonderful dinosaur exhibit. Now I don’t care how old you are… DINOSAURS ARE TOTALLY AWESOME and you know it! Embrace your inner child for a moment and say “yea, they are!” Currently, Sydney made an agreement with Canada to excavate a site in Canada and transport the pieces to Sydney for preservation and testing and all that jazz, and to assemble the pieces for display. They’ve been working on it for the past couple of years and still have lots to complete, but it was a really neat exhibit.

Following, we took a nice stroll through Hyde Park, which we learned today from our our guide (we got tid bits as we went to the other hotels to pick folks up) that it’s in an oval/rectangle shape b/c it’s the sight of the original horse races that took place when Sydney was first being settled by the British.

We headed back towards Darling Harbour after the Museum and decided to go to Sydney Wildlife World, next to the Aquarium. Again, yesterday was so cold and still drizzling on and off, we just wanted to get out of the weather. This place was really cool and almost rivaled the zoo b/c their animals were inside and were warmer and more active, so we got to see these animals doing things, not just huddling trying to stay warm. Notice the picture of the GINORMOUS spider…shout out to Katy- I’m having one of these bad boys imported and specially placed in the corner of your bedroom- DO NOT…I repeat, DO NOT call me to come kill it at 12 am on a work night! If you’re wondering why they’re are no pictures of us holding koalas it’s b/c a) I’m not paying $20 to have my photo taken next to it and b) as we learned today, Australia in most places has a “no touch/handle” koala rule b/c they are easily stressed out creatures, with weak immune systems making them susceptible to human diseases and you can literally scare them to death b/c they have such weak hearts, so in order to be kind to koalas, they passed this law, and most places only do it to make big bucks!

After wrapping up at Wildlife World, this is when we walked to the Entertainment Center and you know the rest…

TODAY… Wine, cheese & chocolate! Today was wonderful. It was our first excursion and venture out of the city and it was money and time well spent. We were picked up this morning by our our guide Johnny. He was super friendly, botched our last name and greeted us with a resounding “hola” in which he proceeded to look at me and say “you don’t look very Spanish.” And I said “I’m not, he his.”

We picked up the rest of the tour attendees and we were off and headed over the Harbour Bridge and out of town. Our tour guide was so wonderful, telling us tid bits along the way. On our way out of town along the Pacific Highway, we passed the Knox Grammar School where Hugh Jackman went to school! Our first stop was a wildlife park where we were treated to muffins, coffee and tea with ‘roos, emus and a koala. Check out the photos. A majority of the roos in the photo were bred there, rescued as joeys and raised, so they are very people friendly and not shy at all. The koala that we were able to get close to, was feisty and swatted several times at the ranger- cute little buggers until you see their claws when they’re aggravated.

Moving along, we all boarded the bus and several miles later, had the opportunity to stretch our legs again and take a short walk along the original road, built by the convicts so the settlers could get from the harbour to the lush, green land of Hunter Valley. The back road we took to HV, is actually part of the original convict road, that is now paved over. ALSO, we got to see a wombat in the wild. Check out the photos.

Back on the bus, our next stop was in Walloombi (pronounced ‘wall-um-by’) for some Dr. Jurd’s Jungle Juice. I don’t know what was in it, but it was tasty so we bought a small bottle to bring back with us. It has a sherry taste to it, but it was like no other alcohol I’ve ever tasted. The photos of Zeus by the creek we’re out back behind this little hovel.

I want to pause and let you know what the drive up, through the little towns and back was like, however this is a shout out to the Taylor’s & Corley’s b/c only they will know what I’m talking about. It’s a mix between the back drive to Tazewell with the winding roads, creeks and sprawling hillsides, meets the flat land and sparsely populated, old run down towns, with random houses you pass on your way to Granddaddy’s in NC. The drive back along the freeway is like coming out of the mountains, with the high mountain walls on either side, on our way from Nanny and Pawpaw’s to Granddaddy’s, but without the run-away truck ramps.

As we left Wallombi, where our tour guide also owns 40 acres with a small country house, (who knew tour guides were so well paid? Actually, he used to own his own biz and purchased the property with his in-laws.) we continued our journey to the vineyards. Our first stop was the BrokenWood Vineyard, where we sampled about 7 different wines, ranging from the Graveyard Vineyards to the Crickett Patch Vineyards. The Semollian was fantastic as was the Savuigun Blanc and dessert wine which they call “Sticky Wine.” All the wines we sampled were amazing and I’m pleased to say, we have a crate arriving in the US in 4-6 weeks. We’ll have to host a wine tasting party! Leaving there with a fantastic buzz, we hopped back in the bus and were off to lunch where they had food paired with different wines. All excellent, but none as good as what we had just sampled. At this place, which was a small resort, they also brewed their own beer so we of course had to try a “paddle” of ales. Literally it was a wooden paddle with six holes, holding six shot glass sized (a little larger) glasses that they filled with their beers. My favorite was the ginger beer ale. Had a slightly sweet taste to it.

After lunch, we were off the the Hunter Valley Chocolate Company where we got to sample chocolate covered coffee beans (I passed on these), candy coated chocolates (like m&m on steroids), I also passed on these, b/c I had the coconut ice (which was a fudge that was scrumptious!) and the chili chocolate bark… yes you read correctly, dark chocolate with chili in it…it was decadent…if you’re into spicy.

Our last stop was the Cook Winery, where the owner is a former airline pilot with Quantas Airlines (Australia’s main carrier) whose shop mainly buys the finest grapes and turns them into wines even though he has several acres of grapes. However, he is so picky, that when his crop was ruined (in his mind)  b/c of the abundance of rain 2 days prior to harvesting this season, sold what good grapes he had and searched out others for this years batch of wine. We bought three bottles from here and some homemade cheese- which we’ll eat prior to leaving here.

The ride back to Sydney was a nice and quiet one. Several folks took a nap (Zeus included) but I was content to work on my word search puzzle book (shout out to Becky & the team for the fun book).  We got back to the hotel around 6:30. We’re now in bed and calling it a night. It’s been a long but wonderful day…and oh I forgot to mention, we saw our first ray of Sydney sunshine. Once we got away from the coast, the sun slowly but surely made its way out and it was heavenly….as I was in serious need of some sunshine!

Until tomorrow…have a good Friday!
Mandy & Zeus

Tags: Hunter Valley Wineries

This entry was posted on Friday, June 6th, 2008 at 7:57 am and is filed under Friends & Family, Vacation & Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.