Fluerieu Peninsula, Adelaide Hills, Hahndorf, McLaren Vale, Victor Harbor

-
Beautiful Adelaide, city of roses to me, has been quite a beautiful place to visit! Although we were enjoying our time in the city, we knew we needed to explore the area surrounding Adelaide, so off we headed!


Our first stop was up in the Adelaide Hills, West of the city, at the National Motor Museum. I thought maybe it was a museum for literally motors, but turns out they meant CARS! We saw cars ranging from the earliest models available and used in Australia, to the newest and fanciest advancements! Here I am in a 1928 Chevrolet! Beep Beep!


Next on our list was down a bit South and East of the Hills, at the oldest German settlement in Australia, Hahndorf. We had a lovely meal, decent beers, and a good look around of the city. Just imagine a touristy little German town in Australia! From there it was a visit to the Hahndorf Farm! Where we pet and fed and played with lots of adorable little farm animals, including these sheep who were super excited to say Hi to me....and get the carrots out of my little snack bag.


We then made our way over to check out the various surfing beaches, as wherever we end up staying has two requirements from Blake. 1. Jobs, and 2. Surfing. While the pictured beach ended up being a bit of a bust, we ended up on another, called Moana and no not like the Disney movie, that seemed to fit the bill!


Down on the South end of the peninsula sits the charming town of Victor Harbor, which is home to the oldest and pretty much only horse drawn tram! The tram runs on rail tracks across a small water channel onto Granite Island. The horse is slow and steady, and seems keen to pull us all across the track. The guide assured us that the effort to pull the tram is greatly reduced as the low-friction environment of the rails makes it easy work for the horse. He then added that the "horse never complains," haha!


Granite Island is rather small, and easy to make a quick, 30 minute walk around. It is also home to Little Penguins! They hunt out in the ocean during the day, and around dusk they return to the island to feed their young. We were able to book an evening tour to see these penguins, and gosh were they cute! We weren't able to get any pictures of our own, as it was dark.


During the day however, we were able to get this picture of these two Shingleback lizards lolling about and chomping on grass. They're about 10-11 inches long, but very slow and dopey looking.


Our last night in Victor Harbor, we went out for a lovely dinner at a historic hotel in the area. As you may know, my favorite thing is to share dessert with Blake. When I ordered the dessert, the kindly server understandably assumed that Blake and I wanted our own desserts. After a glass of wine, I found this quite amusing. And Blake found it funny enough to take a picture. The dessert was quite good.


On the topic of wine, the McLaren Vale region outside of Adelaide is a well known and celebrated wine region! We did make a visit, and got to 3 wineries! Below is a picture of the vineyard across the way from where we stayed for the night in McLaren Vale. 


Next time...Staying put in Adelaide, for now!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Brisbane Wonderful (A play on words "It's been wonderful)

-
Image
With Brisbane Round Two slowly coming to a close, we reflect on the experiences we've had here. Mainly around food, but also on a few other topics.  Our breakfasts have been lovely. One particularly memorable breakfast, pictured below, was proceeded by exciting events. Blake came to the rescue of a table of young girls besieged by an errant bird that flew into the restaurant, smacked into the window, and flopped around, confused and dazed on the banquet. Blake gently ushered the bird out of an open door, much to the relief of all the patrons. A round of applause was his reward.  The breakfast that followed was one of our last out for awhile. All good things must come to an end, and both Blake and I got a little sick of eating out constantly, so we bought some porridge packets (kind of like oatmeal, really) and other breakfast accoutrements and have been eating at our airbnb in the mornings. The only disadvantage to this is that we are at the mercy of our host's ta...
Read more

Not all that glitters is Gold(en) Coast....a Surfer's Paradise lost

-
Image
As the title suggests, not all trips are wholly successful or enjoyable. All are a mixture, with some a bit more balanced than others. One of the things on Blake's "Absolutely MUST DO" list is Surfing. Having done it once or twice before several years ago, he has been anxious to get at it again. At some indeterminate point, I agreed to take one surfing lesson with him, despite my complete lack of interest in being in, near, or on the ocean due to a general distaste for sea water and sand getting all up in my business. I digress, having done a bit of research, Blake settled on the Gold Coast, and a little nook called "Surfer's Paradise" seemed to be just the place. As we have done with all our other trips, we pulled up Airbnb, found an apartment with a little kitchen, a washer and dryer (laundry!!), a reasonable price, and all near the beach! Our day started well packing up from our LOVELY Brisbane Airbnb in New Farm with the most wonderful host and ama...
Read more

What's in a Name?

-
Image
Blake and I are headed on an incredible journey. We talked about ways we could share this journey with our friends and family, and while we will definitely be active and posting on Facebook and Instagram, we knew that having a blog would give everyone a consistent way to keep up with us. Posts get missed, not everyone checks social media all the time, but this little blog will be here for you to check whether you want daily updates (we'll try!) or just to catch up once in a while. Step 2 for the blog was by far the most challenging: Finding a name! We struggled to come up with something clever or funny that we both agreed on and that described our upcoming adventure. Along the way we decided to bring a little Minnesota along to our hosts and new friends in Australia, bags of miniature Pearson's Nut Rolls and Nut Goodies. In moment of good natured frustration, I suggested "Two Nuts on a Roll" as a play on our Nut Roll plans...unfortunately Blake took a liking to it...
Read more