Wildlife sanctuary

Monday we took another tour, basically the same route but instead of wine tasting we went to the animal sanctuary to see all the native birds and animals. Stopped at the same winery as before, had another good wine lunch with tasting the wines afterwords. But the best was another stop at the chocolaterier again. Jim is digging into the free samples.

Next stop was the wildlife where we were guided around for 2 hours. The bird show was fascinating on how they trained the birds to fly to certain spots, mainly over our heads.

Plus saw some of the many birds from the area.

Then onto the Tasmanian Devil.

Jim got to feed an Emu, they are aggressive creatures.

The kangaroos were all resting so didn't get to see them hop around.

Only saw 2 Koalas and they were not moving and refused to show their faces.

Was a little disappointed in our experience, but guess can't complain, we got to see the animals.

Didn't have anything planned for today and since the forecast was for 104 degrees, we went for a walk in the park first thing. Their parks are just beautiful here.

Here is a beautiful old church by our hotel.

Then we went to the Immigration Museum and spent about 2 hours learning all about Australia.  It was so hot after we left the museum that we just walked back to the hotel and have stayed inside the rest of the day. We are heading out for the airport at 5am tomorrow for New Zealand. Will post when I can, but don't know how well WiFi will work where we stay. We've enjoyed our time in Australia but will be glad to get out of these big cities with horrendous traffic into some countryside of New Zealand.

Yarra Valley

Hopped on our day tour bus at 9:45 Sunday morning for a 2 hour ride East of Melbourne to the Yarra Valley for a bit of wine tasting. Our first stop was at Fergusson Winery for a spit roast wine lunch that was quite good then tasted some more of their wines after lunch. Pleasant wines.

Our bus was a bit bigger than the one we took in Sydney.

Then on to the chocolaterier for our dessert. We sampled their chocolates twice then proceeded enjoying two scoops of the delicious ice cream. 

Our next winery was Rochford, which we did not care for their wines at all.

Then on to Dominique Portet for another tasting. These wines were not to our liking also.

We arrived back in Melbourne around 6 and found that housekeeping didn't make up our room, so called for service, so that meant we needed to go out for dinner. After walking around for awhile,we found an English pub, ordered a nice bottle of wine and had a very delicious dinner.

Here are a couple of views of Yarra Valley.

It's not all vineyards like Napa in CA, but much of a farming and ranch area. Beautiful weather, great scenery, good food and wine makes for a good day.

Melbourne Trek

Today we decided to walk around Melbourne, down to the bay. It was 4.5 miles to the bay, and I would like you to know that we didn't get lost once. Left the hotel about 9:30am and got to the bay around 10:45, and walked along the beach path.

Then headed back inland towards the Botanical gardens. This is what the streets looked like.

This is a WWII memorial.

We climbed up the stairs to where you see the people are in the above photo. Here is a view from up there looking back to the CBD (city business district) where our hotel is.

From there we mosied (is that an actual word?) through the gardens for a pleasant walk. Not as big as in Sydney, but still quite beautiful.

Headed back to the hotel from there. Can you believe all the people?

And this picture doesn't really show the true amount of people. After resting for awhile in our room, we headed out for an early dinner. In researching the area, we came up with Meatballs and Wine, about 6 blocks away. It was a good decision. Enjoyed a leisurely bottle of wine then had a very good pasta dinner.

By the time we got back to the hotel we had walked over 24,000 steps for over 11.5 miles today. We probably worked off breakfast. Here is the front of the hotel where we are staying.

We are back in the room enjoying a nice quiet evening. 

Leaving Sydney

Wednesday we started a new driving experience by leaving Sydney. It took us about an hour to get out of town and only one wrong turn (or actually we missed the turn). Not bad. Heading South we will take 3 days to get to Melbourne taking the coastal route. The coastline is just beautiful all along the way, but mostly you drive through the forest which they call the bush. Here are some pictures.

This is 7 mile beach.

Our first night was at Batesman Bay where we stayed at this resort and had a little cabin. We went to the liquor store for wine, then to the grocery store for pizza. Proceeded to enjoy both on our little patio.

Took off the next morning for our next trek to Lakes Entrance another 250 miles. Saw some more beautiful coastal scenery. The Australian coast is just spectacular. 

This place was called Blue Pools. The waves just splashed high on the rocks for a beautiful show.

We stopped at Lakes Entrance, which is pretty much a fishing village.

Had dinner at the Ferryhouse Seafood floating restaurant.

This morning got up, went to McDonalds (yes they are everywhere in Australia) for breakfast then took off for a 5 hour drive to Melbourne. Arrived at the hotel (after 3 times around the blocks to find) early afternoon and checked in. This was what greeted us in the room.

We are finding people here in Australia are quite friendly and hotels quite accommodating. We headed out to the hustle and bustle of the streets. We thought Sydney was packed with people, Melbourne is worse. I don't ever want to stay in a big city again. 

Above picture is a street in Chinatown.

We went to an Argentinan restaurant for dinner, not that great.

Here is a view from our room on the 12th floor.

Well we are caught up and we are heading to bed. Good night.

Hunter Valley

OK, let's try to catch up. Tuesday we took a wine tasting tour to Hunter Valley, we didn't want to drive after tasting wine. Hopped on the bus at our hotel and had a 2 hour drive. Believe me, if we drove we would have been lost within 10 minutes, so we were glad we took a tour.

 Our first stop was a boutique winery, where we had a private tasting of 6 wines, good wines, but not great. We were part of a small group of 16, which made it nice. From there we went to have lunch with a wine pairing at Two Fat Blokes. Interesting and good. After lunch stopped at another winery for another tasting, which was good also. It was almost 7:30 by the time we got back to the hotel. Here are some pictures of the trip.

On our travel back the driver took us to see some kangaroo, but they were so far away the pictures didn't turn out. It was a long day, but saw some countryside. Hunter Valley is North of Sydney. We crashed as soon as we got back to the hotel. 

Blue Mountains

Sorry for not posting, but we've been getting back late and just hopping in bed, so I'll try to catch up now before we take off today. Also I would like to apologize for the size of my pictures, I am using my iPad and I don't know how to adjust the size.

Monday ( remember we are 18 hours ahead of Tucson time) since we've seen as much in Sydney as we wanted to, we caught the train at Central Station and headed west for 2 hours to the Blue Mountains. Round trip cost us $20 aud or $14 US. 

We got off in Katoomba and immediately signed up for the Blue Mountain Explorer Bus where you can hop on and off at all the stops.

Our first stop was Scenic World where we road the 52 degree incline railway.

Walked around in the rain forest with the humidity so high and the temp in the 80s that I've never sweated so much before in my life. Then we took the Cableway which descends 545 meters into the Jamison Valley. Beautiful scenery.

Next we took the Skyway, which wasn't much and basically the same scenery. The next stop was Honeymoon Lookout where we hiked back to Echo Point. Along the way we saw the Three Sisters.

The above picture is of the first of the Three Sisters. After that we hopped on the bus to get back to the train station.

Got back to Sydney and went to Meat & Wine Co for a very nice dinner. Jim ordered a skewer and this is what he got.

This area is called the Blue Mountains because there is a blue haze caused by smaller dust particles and water droplets which are enhanced by millions of oil droplets released into the atmosphere by the huge number of eucalyptus trees. All in all, it was a pleasant but hot day.

I need to write about Tuesday later as I need to pack up to leave this morning for another driving experience.