G'Day!

Sydney-Adelaide-Tanunda I don’t sleep well due to the street noise. The next morning Miranda tells me how well she slept because she used her ear plugs and why didn’t I use my plugs when she told me to do so! Still it’s a sunny day and so after breakfast in the hotel we take a walk around the local shops and admire a statue of Captain James Cook, finally get some money from an ATM and then take the Gemini shuttle bus on Toad’s Wild Ride to the Domestic Terminal. This time its a young guy doing the driving, possibly German, but certainly fantasizing that he’s on some Grand Prix circuit somewhere. The next leg of our trip is to Adelaide to meet up with my brother John and cousin Ngaire and her husband Chris. The first few days of this vacation are to be wine soaked and so we waste very little time in getting to the first winery, Penfolds Magill. This is a vineyard situated in suburban Adelaide that does tastings and winery tours and has a restaurant. We taste through the wines on offer but there is nothing that catches our attention. The others are more interested in food and so its off to find some. We decide to search out the restaurant where we will meet a bunch of other wine lovers for dinner that evening. Its not open for business but they do let us leave our wines there, rather than drag them around in a hot car for the rest of the day. Fortunately there is a little shop nearby that provides us with some sandwiches and coffee. We have a couple of hours to kill before the dinner so we head off to the shops at Hyde Park to idle away the time. Getting back to The Sauce for dinner is a bit of an adventure in itself and we get lost more than once. But fortunately we make it and spend several hours in great company eating fine food and drinking our way through almost 20 excellent wines. The details of the event can be found here and here. As the witching hour of 10pm approaches we have to say our goodbyes and head out to Tanunda. It is somewhat of a miracle that we eventually arrive as we seem to be lost for most of the way. John has organized two very quaint little cottages for us. He, Miranda and I will stay in the palatial Clara’s Cottage while Ni and Chris will stay in the smaller Elsie’s Cottage. Both have been well stocked with breakfast foods, very thoughtful in our case. The decanter of port is perhaps a little excessive. But I guess it goes with the candles, the frog that’s full of bath bubbles and the two person spa bath! Of course there is no phone line and so no access to the internet and so no possibility to post timely updates to any of my eBlogs. But what else is new with these real-time updates that are always late.