The beautiful Hunter Valley!

Tim is on the right, Keith our tour guide is the one who you think looks like a tour guide

Trying to look as tourist as possible!--Our last wine tasting

Just a taste of our sophomoric antics

Looked like a good place for a prom picture!

So we just got back from a long day in Wine Country--Hunter Valley. Not too far from Sydney, about a 2 hour drive. We booked with a tour company and it was 7 of us with 5 other travelers. Let me say, I bet they hated us the first 3 hours of the trip. It was 8 in the morning, most of us were hungover-some still buzzed, and we were the typical loud, crewed college kids that you pray aren't on your trip to wine country.

We visited 4 winerys and had wine tastings at all of them. The tastings were included with the trip and we had the cellar to ourselves. Once everyone had a bit of wine in them, the loud, crewed college kids weren't so bad and the group actually starting coming together. The adults realized that it was pretty funny to make drunk college kid jokes and we thought they were funny too. For an example, throughout the first wine tasting RJ was chewing gum! When we got to the second one our server was a tad insulted and asked if he'd had it in all day, which he replied 'well yeah, no wonder all those wines kinda tasted the same!' I proceeded to ask the server if she had any wine that would pair well with Trident White.

One guy we meet liked us from the beginning, his name was Tim. Tim is a financial adviser from Napa Valley who has winery clients. Lets just say that Tim was the man, from the get go he was making bets on which one of us would have to be carried, and boldly proclaiming to anyone who would listen that he was our chaperon. At one winery he told the servers that he was our professor and we were on a field trip, from then on he was known as 'The Professor'. The Professor actually imparted us with some great wine knowledge, and some what I would call 'man knowledge' he was loving it, living vicariously though us.

Some other cool places we visited included the Blue Tongue Brewery where we had lunch and did a flight of beers. We also stopped at a place called the 'Smelly Cheese Shop' where we had some cheese tastings and let me tell you, it was amazing. We had some great blue cheese and some amazing feta. The feta wasn't the crumbly feta that you're used to in the states, it was more liquid and was infused with anything from pesto to red peppers and sun-dried tomatoes. We also stopped at a chocolate shop and had some fudge, but I was less enamored with the sweets shop than anything else.

All in all it was a great day and I think i learned some cool stuff about Australian wine. I was bummed we didn't get to tour any of the wine making process, but free glasses of wine is good enough i suppose. I don't claim to have the pallet of a wine connoisseur (read Dr. Bres) but I can for sure tell the difference between a white and red!

Melbourne....pronounced Mel-Bin

Luke Feldman the professional cricketer

A view from the Skydeck
Big pimpin, plus they are reversible

B-Ridge in the Bootleg Terminal

Well I'm finally recovering from my recent weekend trip to Melbourne! My travel companions on this excursion were RJ, Kalli and Bridgit, and we were able to meet up with some of our friends Leah, Meaghan, Jonah and Sydney. We flew in Thursday afternoon and came home Sunday morning at 0650! Needless to say, Sunday was pretty rough; hangovers are hard when you just don't sleep.

So we got into Melbourne at about 4:30 PM and caught the Skybus shuttle into the city. It was pretty simple which is nice because we literally got off the plane and said, 'shit, how do we get downtown?' The airline that we flew was called Tiger Airways, and let me tell you it was a piece of junk! They don't even have a designated terminal at the Melbourne Airport, we literally got off and walked into what looked like a holding pen for detainees. It was a parking lot that was surrounded in chain link fence.

We stayed at a hostel called Nomads Melbourne and all in all it was a great hostel. We were able to meet up with some friends who had gone down the previous day so of the ten beds in the hostel, our group used 6. Our first night we went to a local Italian place and got some really good pizza, then we explored a little and hit up the hostel bar and then a few local pubs. The beer is real cheap if you know where to look, we were able to get $10 jugs (pitchers) which is unheard of in OZ.

The next morning we decided to hit up the Queen Victoria Market for some breakfast and souvenir shopping. RJ and I bought matching Kimono's and wore them around all day. We got a few stares and one man came up and said we had better be getting paid to wear them. Later in the afternoon we walked down to see the real heart of Melbourne. I forget what it was called but it had tons of shops and boutiques. RJ and I were following a bunch of girls which was nice, but shopping really isn't our thing so we just took it all in. We had lunch at a great cafe where I had the best BLT ever. After a long day we went back to the hostel to relax and celebrate our friend Kalli's 21st birthday.

Back at the hostel, we were taking bets on how long Kalli would make it and the over/under was 10PM. Lets just say the under won by a landslide! So she had a rough night but the rest of us had a great time checking out the Eureka Skydeck which is the Southern Hemispheres highest viewing deck, Melbourne looks amazing at night, but my one critique was that around the viewing deck they had set up what looked like binoculars, they were not binoculars they were kaleidoscopes which made seeing every thing even harder. The joke we made was "too easy to see Melbourne, trying looking through a kaleidoscope". We were hungry and decided to stop for a quick bite at McDonalds, not good I know, but the cheapest thing besides a burger was $10 garlic bread. Next we walked around to some local pubs/clubs which all the ladies we were with had no trouble getting into, but RJ and i were denied from every single one! We finally found a great local pub and tucked in for the night.

Saturday morning was rough, but we all got up and tried to plan out our day. The first thing we wanted to do was rent a car but thankfully we decided against it. Instead we took a tram to the cricket pitch and watched a cricket game. It was really cool, very relaxed and laid back. A friend we were with was talking to one of the fielders and got his number and later that night we meet up with Luke Feldman and the rest of his cricket team. It was pretty cool.

We stayed up all night partying with the cricket team and then headed back to the hostel to grab out stuff and head to the airport. The check in at Tiger Airways is just as bootleg as the baggage claim and it was made worse by the fact that we were all hungry, it was 5:30 and we hadn't slept a wink. Lets just say Sunday was a mess but we made it home to Sydney safe and sound! Another trip in the books. Peter comes in a week and I'm excited for our quickly approaching trip to the Great Barrier Reef and Brisbane!

What a weekend!

Well I stayed in Sydney this weekend and had what you might call a relaxing couple days. Thursday night was the Uni Bar Toga party which was a good time, my first ever Toga Party and I have to come to Australia to have it! I was pretty slow getting up on Friday morning but I did make it out of bed and decided to meet my friend Aaron at the beach. Another buddy of mine RJ decided to join me.

RJ and I never made it to the beach, we ended up just spending the day exploring Sydney, we checked out Darling Harbour, the Sydney Tower Space Needle thing and Chinatown. The funniest part of the whole day was how we got utterly and completely lost. Our only initial goal was to see Chinatown, but it took about 4 hours of walking in a giant circle to find it. Little did we know that we were literally one block away from the get go. While in Chinatown we walked past a vendor selling BBQ Meat, looking into the stand we saw squares of meat about 3 inches by 3 inches and about as flat as cardboard. It just looked too interesting to pass up so we went and ordered. They asked if we wanted beef or pork, I ordered beef and RJ ordered pork, but I really don't think it mattered because they took the meat from the same pile. It was interesting, but a little harrowing because let me just say it probably wasn't FDA approved.

That night we decided to meet some friends at a Rugby League game, the Waratahs versus the Lions. For those of you who dont know a Waratah is a huge flower, the stadium was awesome and there weren't a whole lot of people so for a $16 ticket we snuck down to the very front. Very cool.

On Saturday afternoon I walked over to another local field to watch some friends of mine play on the Uni Rugby team, all my friends were American and I was really excited to watch them get crushed by these huge Australians, however they rode pine the whole game, didn't get to play once. Oh well it was fun to watch the other guys play!

Up and Away!

Well, I've finally booked my two biggest trips. I'm traveling with Peter to Cairns/Brisbane for about a week, and then I fly home, rest for a day and turn around to head to Queenstown New Zealand for another week. I'm banking on both of them being the trip of a lifetime!

Hit the frog and toady!

I just got back from a weekend escape to the Blue Mountains and it was fantastic! I went with 7 other friends and we stayed at a local hostel. It was nice because the hostel had 8 beds and we had 8 people, a perfect fit. We left Friday afternoon and barely caught the train, we had to run on without a ticket, we actually left a friend behind which was sad but there will be other trips. Katoomba is the city in the Blue Mountains we stayed at and it is about a 2 hour train ride from Sydney. Upon arrival we sampled the local cuisine (burgers and chips) and hit up the corner pub for Trivia. Unfortunately we got last place, and i also only matched 3 of 15 numbers in my first KENO experience. But it was all good because a friend of mine Sydney won a raffle for a free case of beer!

Day two started out with a big Aussie brecky and some hiking through the beautiful Blue Mountains. It was very picturesque and a good workout. We saw the 3 sisters which is a huge rock formation and is kinda the main attraction. Towards the end of our day we were standing next to a huge waterfall looking down and I caught a glimpse of a girl who looked naked. I looked harder and i realized that she in fact was naked with another naked girl taking pictures under the waterfall. Nothing sexual or dirty, but they seemed oblivious to like the heaps of people watching them. After about ten minutes they noticed that they were the center of attention,freaked out and put their clothes on. All in all I think it was one of the highlights of the trip!

We decided to get some Thai food that night and I had a great Massaman Lamb Curry, I love curry. We then got rowdy at the local club that night. Everyone in my party had meet a girl/guy except for me so I ended up rolling with some 30 year old Aussie dude who introduced me to a bunch of nurses, it was weird i was the youngest one in the conversation and the only American, needless to say neither party was interested.

We got up this morning and decided to take the long, hungover trip back to Sydney, all in all a great trip. Thank you linesmen, thank you ball boys.