Wine tasting

Saturday was a looong day!! I had to be at UNSW for the bus by 820am to go to the Hunter Valley for the wine tasting. There were about 20 of us that went -- it is about a 2.5 hour drive north of Sydney. We stopped at the Australian Reptile park on the way there and saw kangaroos and koalas and things like that and then made our way to 3 different vineyards where we had private wine tasting. At each place you sample whites, reds, and sparkling--between 6 to 10 different wines -- so at the end you feel pretty good. What is neat is that many of the wines are only available at the vineyards and not at the local bottle shops. I got a lovely white semillon and a mix called Dragon's Breathe from 2 of the wineries. If I don't open the Dragon's Breathe before I leave you will all have to taste it...it is a chili schnapps and its HOT. After we got back about 8 of us went to Wolfie's and have a nice BIG dinner and then I took 4 of the boys around to one of the "local" bars. Unfortunately in Sydney places don't let guys in very easily so we could only get into the lower portions even after I used my amazing American charm to get us upstairs and the reply was "Yeah, you can go up but they can't" so it cut the night pretty short. But overall it was such a good day to be with Americans and hear about the NFL and MSU basketball and just US gossip again. They thought I was great too because when I talk I slip between American and Australian in mid-sentence -- I think I must just do it over here because I don't really recall doing this at home... Anyway it made for a nice Saturday.