Wine Tour

Ahhh, wine tours. This past weekend Evatt chartered a bus and we headed to the famed Hunter Valley - a huge wine producing region in Australia. On our first stop, we visited a winery famous for chilli schnapps - but I'm getting ahead of myself. First we tried a toffee, white chocolate and mango liquours, and to finish off, we sampled the house specialty - chilli schapps. Click the link to watch a video of us taking the shot (though it's only about 1/8 full), and notice how just seconds after we all take it, almost as if on command, we all cry out "Ohhhh!" in unison.


After the liquours, we headed to another winery and tried some delicious Chardonnay, Merlot, Port, and other wines. The scenery was gorgeous; be sure to check out the pictures on my new Fotki site (yes, I ran out of space on my old account, so I had to create another free account. Just follow the link.)

After a nice lunch in the park, we headed to our third winery, where I bought some delicious Verdelho. Finally, we headed to an Irish pub for a nice beer. We elected for the beer tour there, sampling a few beers from around the world. I created my own six-pack to take home with me with a variety of beers, my favorite of which is a cheap-looking German beer simply called "Sexy Lager" with a picture of a scantily clad lady on the front. Classy.

This weekend? We're off to the Blue Mountains for a 50K hike through the Six Foot Track. I've wanted to go camping since I arrived in Australia, so now's my chance! It's one of the most beautiful parks in the country so I'm told. Plenty of photos to come I'm sure.

One other thing to note: Australia just went off daylight savings, where as you guys in the States went on it. We "fell back" into fall (turning back one hour), and you "sprang forward" into spring (turning ahead one hour). What does this mean to you? The time difference between US Central Time and Sydney time is now 15 hours, instead of 17. So, to figure out what time it is here, just take the US Central time, then add 15 hours, or subtract 9 hours and add a day. So if it's 8:00 PM Tuesday in the States, it's 11:00 AM Wednesday in Newcastle. Or, for you non-math folk, just come to my blog and check the local time at the top.