Sydney 2012: From Goon to Semillon

Friday:

Spent the beautiful day on the beach. I could easily spend every day laying on the beach if only school didn't get in the way... I started reading The Hunger Games to see what the hype is all about, and it is excellent so far! Stopped reading for a bit to watch the sun go down on the beach. Cooked dinner with my roomies and then went out to the infamous Coogee Bay Hotel. Drank cider and enjoyed making some Aussie friends! Flip flops + walking up the giant hill home = blood blister number two so far.

Saturday:

Bars in Australia are open until 7 am. Saturday was the huge music festival Future (similar to Sasquatch or ACL) here, which means Australians started partying at around 7 am for this. Which means that they never stopped. My party-hardy neighbor's music was pretty loud when I went to bed, but I was so tired that it didn't really bother me. What did really bother me was waking up to Skrillex at 6 am outside my window. Not the most fun way to start your morning... Didn't get much sleep to say the least. At one point, I felt like I was at a club and it almost made me want to go dance. Then I remembered it was 7 am and all I wanted to do was sleep some more... But I got up and went to the aquarium with some friends! I met up with a girl who went to my high school who now lives in Sydney. It is always so nice to see a friendly face from home. She is an au-pair for a family in the city and is having a great time so far. We walked through the shark tank tunnel, saw great-whites, stingrays, turtles, jellyfish, octopi, sea horses, giant crabs, sea snakes, etc. It was awesome. Then we had lunch at Blackbird again at Darling Harbor and enjoyed some delicious food overlooking the water. When I got back home, I did the Coogee to Bondi walk by myself at sunset-couldn't think of a more peaceful and beautiful walk. What a great way to end the day.

Sunday:

Actually had to wake up at 6 am for the Hunter Valley Wine Tour! Except it wasn't that hard because Skrillex was still bumping outside my window. For all those who know me, I do struggle to function earlier than noon. So the bus left at 6:50 and my roommates and I walked out the door at 6:46, saw the bus arrive at the very bottom of the hill, and sprinted to make it. Seems to be a common theme in Australia. Constantly running around, always about to be late and miss something (bridge climb anyone?). Side note: other common theme in Australia-always finding the thing you just bought for way cheaper at the place next door. Anyways, the sprint to the bus definitely woke me up. We met our driver Brian in the city at 7:30 to begin our day! The Mercedes-Benz silver bus held 13 people plus Brian, so this poor family got stuck with the 10 of us.. They warmed up to us by the end though, no worries! They were wonderful and a ton of fun. Roland was 24 and working for Microsoft in the city, and his parents had come to visit him from London for the weekend. The bus ride was about two hours long, so we were all pretty tired by the time we arrived in Hunter Valley at 10 am. Time to drink some wine!

If you are from America and you want to drink cheaply in Australia, you buy Goon. Australians will make fun of you and compare it to drinking urine, but it is very, very cheap. Goon is boxed wine, aka Franzia. And really gross. So we were all laughing at how delicious the wine we were tasting was compared to the goon we had tried. The white wine Australia is known for is Semillon, and the red wine they are known for is Shiraz. We went to five wineries, LambLoch, McGuigan, First Creek, Tempus Two, and The Hunter Resort. The Hunter Resort also had a Brewery Cafe, where we did a beer tasting. We also went to the Smelly Cheese Shop and did a cheese tasting and olive oil tasting. The best part may have been the chocolate shop at the end where we did a chocolate tasting. They served us a delicious pizza lunch that we all definitely needed before we headed home.

We tasted about five wines at each winery. I loved the white wines-I bought a bottle of the Classic Semillon from LambLoch (for you guys to try when you come visit, mom and dad!). I also loved the sparkling wine we tried at McGuigan. The red wines were not my thing, and the dessert wines could have been good as they suggested drizzling them over fruit or a dessert, but they were way too sweet, even for me, just to drink as a companion to the dessert. An interesting one we tried at First Creek was Raspberry Wine. We were told you are supposed to mix it with champagne for a special occasion or a "fun evening." Anyways, it was really good.

The cheeses were actually delicious. We tried a pesto goat cheese, a lemon feta, a sun dried tomato cheese... all so good. The garlic olive oil was also amazing. Best I have had probably so far. The balsamic was incredible too-still kicking myself for not buying them! The chocolate tasting was interesting-I tried chili chocolate. Chocolate is not supposed to be spicy...so this was the only time in my life I will say I did not like the chocolate. But the fudge was to die for.

Beautiful sunny day, wine, friends, food, gorgeous scenery... truly a spectacular day. I will say it was funny to watch a bunch of 21 year olds being "classy"-describing how the wine tasted and deciding which ones we liked and why.