Day One: Wine Tour
We are up to go through immigration and meet at the McDonald's in Circular Quay by 9:30 a.m. to take a tour to Hunter Valley, 2 1/2 hours and 100 miles northwest of the Sydney. Our guide Nick told us that "it's wine o'clock somewhere." We traveled part of the way on Highway 1 that circumnavigates the continent of Australia. The mild summer with too much rain was not the best for the winemakers. If the growing season is too rainy, they face a good quantity of grapes but now quality. If a drought occurs, the grapes are good quality but not good quantity. Fortunately, 2011 was a good year. The typical hot summers are best for white wine grapes while shiraz is the main type of red wine grapes.
We drove through the little town of Kearsley that is known for "wines, vines and people" because many of the people who work in the vine industry live there. Our first stop was Kelman Vineyard, a boutique winery producing a beautiful range of premium and sweet wine from only 25 acres in Pokolbin, The grapes are handpicked allowing for premium quality. Jamie, our server who did not look old enough to be 18, was a gracious host who poured one delicious wine after another. The winery had a sale on its Chardonnay for 12 bottles for $60. Bernie, who we later learned was a classmate and good friend of George W. Bush at pilot school, suggested that we buy a case of wine at each of the three wineries we would visit and split them among the 11 people on the tour. We quickly agreed. In hindsight, we should have purchased three cases of the chardonnay because it was the best quality and best price of all the wines we tasted.
Our second stop was Poole's Rock Vineyard. This was an upscale winery with a modern chrome and straight-lined design where the wines ranged from $20 to $40. Our guide told us to check out the restrooms with their square toilets. This place lacked charm. Several people purchased individual bottles, and Jim convinced our hostess to sell him two wine glasses at $5 each.
The last stop was at Ernest Hill Winery with a great last and middle name for the men in the family. Wilson,the last name, is my mother's maiden name and Ernest is the middle name of all the males involved in the winery. Because the winery sits on a hill, the Hill in the name is obvious. This winery named several of its wines after deceased relatives. Because no relatives have died recently, the owners are taking the wine names from the different locations of the grapes. Again the wines ranged in price from $20 to $40 per bottle. So we returned to the ship and each couple took their two bottles of wine.
Ken did not want to leave the ship so we spent several hours in the spa watching the spectacular Sydney skyline as the day turned from sunshine to dusk. It was a very pleasant way to celebrate a wonderful tour of Australia's wine country.
Day Two: Blue Mountains
While we had visited the Blue Mountains last year, so named because of the blue haze that results from the eucalyptus trees, we decided to join a group of our fellow passengers from the ship who had discovered a very reasonably priced tour from a company called Oz Trails. Again, we all met at the McDonald,s on Circular Quay at 8 a.m. The lesson learned from our trip is that you get what you pay for and sometimes you end up paying more than you expected.
Our guide Gerard, a young John Travolta look-alike, was a one-man band in a setting that deserved a symphony orchestra. He both served as our guide and our driver. The van that picked us up was late and filled to the brim. Ken and I ended up setting in seats in the back that were one step lower than the rest of the van. This situation did not make for a comfortable ride and also ended up causing a problem for me when we returned to the ship, that I will describe later. The woman sitting in the third seat in the back row had a cold but decided to take the tour anyway because she had paid for it and was flying to Boston the next day. She was born in Germany. When I asked her about Dusseldorf, where we will be spending three days in early May before returning to Florida, she curtly replied that the only city worth visiting in Germany was Munich, her hometown. On further examination, she confessed that she had never been in Dusseldorf. I don't think one should critique cities that she has not seen. And the entire time she was degrading our choice to visit Dusseldorf, I was concerned that Ken or I would catch her cold.
When we arrived at the tourist attractions at the Blue Mountains, we learned that we need to pay an additional $25 Australian to see them. In this case, the woman with the cold acted as our money changer because she wanted to get rid of her Australian dollars. (In addition, neither Ken or I developed a cold.) We did learn about rainforests. Vines form a canopy of leaves on the top while the ferns on the bottom of the rainforest try to catch the sunlight coming through the canopy. Because the amount of rain is the same across the entire valley, the light is what makes a rainforest. Visitors do not see many animals in the rainforest because the animals are nocturnal. We did hear the sounds of the lyre bird that can mimic other sounds. When this flightless bird shows it tail feathers to attract female birds, he fans them out in the shape of a lyre, thus its name. We also saw the Katoomba Coal Mine that was opened in 1878 and once again learned the legend of the Three Sisters.
We ate lunch by buying ready made foods at a Woolworth's, Australia's grocery store. Unfortunately, unlike Ukrop's in Richmond, these grocery stores do not have any tables and chairs for shoppers so we sat on a bench inside the store while the cashiers and customers looked at us as an unusual sight. Then I had a strange encounter with our tour guide. When we got on the van, he either forgot that it was me or never really realized that I was one of his customers and proceeded to tell us about this "little old lady" who apologized to him for his mistake. I still cannot believe that Ken gave our guide a tip!
On the return trip at a scenic stop, our guide played the didgeredo for us (at least we knew what was in the mysterious package that took up valuable storage space in the back of the van) and explained the story behind a drawing by the Aboriginals. For a real tour, we should have had an Aboriginal do these things. This tour was certainly very low budget, and we got what we payed for! If we ever return to Sydney again, we will confine our touring to the spectacular city itself.
Oh yes, about my eye. The air conditioning in the bus blew directly on my right eye when I talked with Ken or looked out the window. That night when I tried to remove the contact lens from my right eye, I could not find it, probably because the direct air conditioning had dried it out and plastered it to my cornea. My eye hurt so much but I thought that after a good night's sleep, it would feel better. I couldn't sleep because of the pain so I went in the bathroom and eventually removed the contact from myAs eye. The next morning everything seen by my right eye was blurry. Lorraine, our doctor friend, looked at it and determined that I had scratched my cornea. For the next three days, I spent most of the time in our room with the draperies closed and used an eye patch under sunglasses when I ventured to the public areas on the ship. Then I could see again. The tour exacted a much higher price than I ever expected to pay.
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