Vikki's Grand Tour

I'm sat here, and I should be doing my assignments right now, but I really can't get my motivation going, so I thought I'd do a quick blog.

It was a short week at work last week as we had a public holiday on Friday due to the APEC conference. I actually had an exciting moment on Thursday morning, from my works window I saw George Bush and his 30 or so vehicle motorcade leave the hotel car park, I had a prime view. Not that I could see him..only his car... but at least I saw a bit of the action! Actually we were watching the news over the weekend, and for the last evening of the conference the government put on fireworks on the harbour for all the leaders and their wives....and I have to say I was very disappointed about that, it's pretty disgraceful, what a waste of money, and when I say fireworks, they don't scrimp one bit, it's a full on spectacular show. I could think of many more things that money would have been better used for, but anyway!

So Friday afternoon, Jason and I drove up to the Hunter Valley for the weekend...and I must say it was just what the doctor ordered. We've been saving so hard for so long, we've hardly done anything else for ourselves, so we thought it was about time. We stayed just outside the Valley in a town called Maitland in a lovely 4 star serviced apartment. It was like a ghost town there, we went out on the Friday night with plans for a lovely meal, but we couldn't find hardly anywhere to eat, and the whole place was like a ghost town, we didn't see one person! In the end we found a pub with a bistro, but it was more like an RSL club, not very romantic...and luckily for Jason (not for me) he did get his wish to see the rugby game on the TV (while eating dinner!)

Saturday, our bus for the wine tour was late, eventually, it turned up an hour and a half late. We were a bit annoyed, but didn't want to let it ruin our day. We had a great day, we went to lots of wineries we hadn't been before, a lot of the boutique ones which was great. We didn't really have a proper chocolate or cheese tasting though, but we were going to go back the next day anyway, so that didn't matter. When we got on the bus back to the hotel, we all had a gift pack with 2 bottles of wine each on our seats...the company had given them to us as an apology for being late which was very nice...we added it to our growing collection of wine that we had already bought! Had a snooze on the way back as you know drinking lots of alcohol in the day makes you sleepy. We had a low key evening and just ordered a pizza and watched a dvd.

Sunday we checked out and drove back to do a bit of cheese and chocolate tasting... I didn't feel like any more wine though (well that's until 11am when we go to the Arrowfield Estate!!) We had another great day, after some cheese tasting we went to Palmers Lane where they were having a Spring festival. We stopped off at one winery, (actually it was a shed) but anyway, we had sample of the chardonnay, then were treated to a show of a couple of Latin dancers....then it was our turn to join in, except that I wasn't dancing with Jason, but the guy who owned the winery (shed). They showed us some moves, but at one point it got a bit embarassing cos I had to move up and down him quite closely.. bless him, he asked if my boyfriend minded!! After that, he said we could have a complimentary ride on his bus, you should have seen it, it was an archaic double decker bus. Luckily we were only going up the road to a couple more vinyards, so we thought we would go. On the bus were some kids that were playing at being the bus conductor, one of them must be a local cos he was very knowledgable about the area, we were quite amused. At one of the vinyards we entered the race of the rubber ducks, but unfortunately did not win anything. So we did get to taste some more cheese and had some chocolate dipped marshmallows which were yummy. We've brought back heaps of wine and some cheese too, but we have to be good now as we have our Bridge run next weekend, 9km, and I've hardly done any training..oops!

here are some pics from the weekend