Reality Check!

After our exciting adventures in Adelaide it was time for Lise and me to fly to Brisbane and Lindsey to fly to Sydney. Lindsey was continuing her holidays for a couple of extra days in Sydney, and Lise was meeting her parents for the rest of her holidays touring all over Aussie. As for me I was heading home… and looking forward to it! We all made it to our destinations safe and sound… well except of course for my really expensive bottle of wine that I bought on our winery tour….. So for the wholeeee 2 hour train ride home nobody would sit beside me… or near me really – I guess I wouldn’t want to sit beside anybody that reeked of red wine either…. I was really looking forward to that wine too!!

As for the rest of my holidays – it was spent absolutely enjoying the time to myself in an empty house for some quiet ‘me’ time…

So July 25^th roles around… and all of a sudden I’m smacked back into semester 2 and it seems to be even crazier than last semester! But one more semester to go and I will be done school… for ever… wellllllll for a while anyway.

But the good news is – I only have class Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday this semester! The even better news is Dad and Linda fly in on Tuesday and pick me up after school on Wednesday!

Adventurous Adelaide - Day 2 & 3 - July 11th & 12th

The second day in Adelaide was really relaxing – we weren’t up for much after being busy for two weeks straight so we wandered around for a bit, did some relaxing shopping, and then we went to watch a movie – Bridesmaids… really funny – reallllyyyy inappropriate. After the movie Lindsey and I decided to find a coffee shop, update our journals and relax for the rest of the afternoon. Lise decided that wasn’t for her – so she went to Adelaide’s famous beach spot called ‘Glenag’…. It is really touristy in the summer but I wasn’t feeling the beach in 10 degree, rainy weather – the coffee shop was just what I wanted! That pretty much summed up our second day in Adelaide.

Day Three (July 12^th) – another busy day – today was our wine tour! Our first (not related) stop was at the ‘Whispering Wall’. Which is this crazy bendy wall that has water on one side and land on the other and if one person stands at one side, and another person stands at the other end – you can hear the first person speaking as clear as water, as if they are standing right beside you!

And then it was what we were all waiting for – The wineries! We went to four different wineries in total, tasting all sorts of wine at all of them. After our third winery we stopped for lunch and had some Barossa Valley cheese and delicious food! It was sooo good, of course along with a nice glass of wine. Some of the vines in the Barossa Valley are over 150 years old – and they are everywhere! It was really cool to see so many wineries and such old vines.

One of these days we went out for dinner and I got Chicken Schnitzel – and it is so big that it earns its right on this blog!

Oh and one more thing...... look at what we found!!!

I would be the one to find a sign like this in Australia....... Still can't believed I missed Havelock this year!

Adventurous Adelaide - Day 1 (July 10th)

Today was our first day in Adelaide after our outback trip, and we had a busy day scheduled! Three years ago when Lise was in Australia, she met a girl named Amy, who lives in Adelaide, and was nice enough to be our personal tour guide for the day!

Amy picked us up at 9:30am at our hostel, and our first stop of the day was called ‘Morialta Conservation Park.’ Where we saw our very first koala in the wild! Super exciting!! We all decided that we have done enough walking for the last two weeks – so we decided to do an easy, relatively flat walk to the base of a waterfall.

Oh yeaa!! First wild Koala.... Can you see it??

Back in the car we headed for our second stop which was ‘Mt. Lofty Summit – Cleland Conservation Park’ – we weren’t there for too long, unfortunately it was an absolute miserable, rainy, cold day (yes it can get to ridiculously low temperatures… in Australia!). So we peered over the top of the summit for about 5 minutes and headed back, it was unfortunate because it would have been a gorgeous view without the fog and if it hadn’t been freezing.

After the summit we headed to a German town called ‘Hahndorf’. The town was so cool, it was a little quaint German town, and it was really touristy, with all these little random shops. The first one we went to was a little ‘fairy’ shop that sold fairy everything, I’m pretty sure the owner believed there were fairies…. There were all these little wineries, and tacky shops, there was this one store that sold Scottish everything.. I know right – how confusing – a Scottish store, in a German town, in Australia… hmm… Anyway there was a book of last names and if your last name was in the book they could look up the origin for you – well low and behold Closs was in there. Apparently it’s German, and Irish. Our next stop in the German town was a chocolate and lolly shop that sold all different kinds of chocolate and candy from all over the world… obviously we spent too much money there.

Back in the car to head to our 3^rd of the day – ‘Warrawong’ which is a safe haven for rare and endangered animals. Too bad it was raining and cold….. again. We went to the little talk that the park put on, where we held another blue tongue lizard, turtle, pet a (really ugly) possum, saw a giant mouse thing and a small kangaroo type animal (it had a pouch – but look like a rat). After that we decided to walk around – I spotted the first koala in the tree (go me!) We kept walking, we saw ducks, and a black swan but definitely no platypus…. Shucks…

aww look - I made a friend - this little guy walked right up to us... well me.. you can buy food for $2 but why in the world would I do that when he'll eat grass out of my hand.... hmmmm

look up!! I see a koala!!

Amy then dropped us back off at our hostel after a very busy day, the weather was really unfortunate but the Adelaide Hills scenery was really beautiful and we still had a great day! We grabbed some dinner at the IGA (nachos… yum), did some laundry, updated journals, and called it in for another early night.

Quorn to Adelaide - July 9th - Day 14

Our last day of holidays in the outback L

Just a sign for personal reference....

W'anchor' - don't drive like a wanker!

Oh yesss another 6am wake-up call – might as well considering it’s our last day and all… First stop Dutchman Stern’s Conservation Park – where we were doing our last big walk of the trip! It was a 4km walk on a relatively steep incline. It was unfortunate that it was soooo foggy, by the time we got to the top the fog hadn’t lifted so we couldn’t see much – but it was a nice walk for the morning (well besides the rain). By the time we were half way down the fog started to lift so we got a bit of a nice view..

After our walk Shane dropped us off in Quorn to look around and he headed back to make lunch. The steam train in Quorn was just about to leave so we stuck around to watch it – which was pretty cool. I felt like I was in the past in some old black and white movie… it was really neat!

After the train departed we got some coffee and walked back to our accommodation for lunch. Shane made us a special treat for lunch we had bacon and eggs and it was delicious!!! We cleaned up after lunch and hit the road to Adelaide.  We made some small stops along the way – at gas stations and stuff but nothing too exciting.

We finally hit Adelaide and it was time to say goodbye to our new friends – we give Lucy, Steve and the kids big hugs and wish them well and then they were on their way. Our hostel was the next stop – we said goodbye to the Americans and got off the bus. Big hugs for Shane – great guide, sad to part ways!! We then went on our way… We went to the restaurant Shane recommended with the Adventure Tours deals which was a cute little Italian restaurant (so good!) and they gave us free mud cake because they weren’t open for the next two days and they wanted to give it away – I wasn’t going to complain! At 8:55pm we were back in our hostel and in bed! Tomorrow we definitely didn’t have to get up at 5, 6 or 7!

Quorn - Day 13 - July 8th

6:00 am wake-up call this morning! First stop of the morning was at this old sheep homestead – where we saw sheep! Imagine that!

Random picture Kind of thrown in there - it was the same day as the sheeps but I only liked this picture so I put it in.. one more stop was at an Aboriginal Cave Painting site.... This was at that site...

I sat up in the front for a bit – gorgeous views from the front of the bus! There was fog over the hills in the distance, gorgeous colours with the sunrise and fog – definitely happy I chose to sit up front for a bit!

Next stop was the big stop of the day….. Wilpena Pound – where we had the choice of two walks a 7.8km relatively flat walk or a 3km + UP – Lindsey and I decided to stick with the flat walk – the easier of the two. About half way there, there was an old house with a story about Jessie – it was about how her and her family lived in this house and worked their tails off trying to farm in the 1800’s and how the land was so harsh and it was so difficult to live – pretty neat story. Jessie’s family’s house was still there and standing and you could look into the windows. When we got to the top we still had amazing views and had great photo opportunities overlooking the land. We headed back down and started getting lunch ready for the rest of the crew.

We then jumped back on the bus for a well-deserved nap and headed back to Quorn to the wallaby lookout. Of course once we got there I forgot my classes on the bus and had to run back to the bus to get them – by the time I got back everyone was leaving and the wallabies were gone – and I ran (more like sprinted) 1km for nothing. So I sat in the front to see if I could see any – so we said to our tour guide, we said, “Shane, can you please let us see some wallabies and kangaroos so Alyssa can see them”, Shane goes sure thing “Woosh” and there they were… Literally – no joke – all of a sudden kangaroo appeared – and not just any kangaroo – an albino kangaroo!!!! Needless to say Shane was pretty happy with himself – especially because he had never ever seen an albino kangaroo either!

We then headed back to the accommodation for some dinner – and we watched ‘Pricilla Queen of the Desert’ which we were told is a must when we were here. Let me explain this scenario – all 6 kids were down there with us, Lucy and Steve and team Canada watching this movie. This movie is about drag queens that drive from Sydney to Alice Springs (and they stopped at a lot of places we had just visited!) with a lot of inappropriate language and innuendos. The most awkward scene was the scene with the ping pong show – now I’m not going to explain it in detail – but basically it involves a girl and a ping pong ball and an audience the ping pong ball somehow ends up in the audience… and she didn’t use her hands to get it there…. Anyway not necessarily appropriate for the age group…. Needless to say it was cool to see the places we had just visited in a movie!