After Christmas, my friend, Kate, met up with me in Sydney to do some hanging out. We ditched the hostel for a hotel (YEAH! she couldn’t get a room for all the nights AND it was cheaper. I swear.), shopped- a lot, drank some wine, shopped some more, and went to bed embarrassingly early on more than one occasion.

Room upgrade:

Of course, we also went on a wine tour, the day after the one night we stayed up til 2 and 3 in the morning. Let’s just say we weren’t the most enthusiastic bunch at our 7 am pick up.

On our wine tour, we visited:

Tempus Two, where I was reminded I am a light weight and probably shouldn’t be drinking 6 glasses of wine back to back at 10am;

the smelly cheese shop, where Kate and I bought a fresh, warm loaf of bread and some cheese (I know, not vegan. But holy booze, Batman!) to soak up said glasses of wine…and maybe some of the booze from the night before;

Lambloch, which had the best view and where we hoovered down our bread and cheese;

Blueberry Hill, where we discovered there ain’t no shame in sipping your wine and then dumping it in the conveniently placed bins as soon as the instructors turn their back on you;

That’s the spirit, Kate!

The Blue Tongue Brewery, where we stopped for lunch and passed on the beer. We thought it best not to mix wine and beer. We did go next door to their cellar door wine tasting, though, where we met the nicest guy, who tried to help us pick out a wine to pair with our dinner of  frozen pizza. Not surprisingly, we didn’t find one;

and Misty Glen Wines, a newer, smaller vineyard run by a retired couple with the two cutest dogs that we got to play with. There aren’t any pictures of this because by the time we hit this one, we were exhausted and half in the bag. Sleeping and possibly snoring, happened on the van ride back to Sydney.

We also stopped at this second cheese store in a plaza with a few other cutesy stores but only had about 15 minutes to hit up all the stores.This was SO frustrating. Don’t advertise a tour as a wine, cheese and chocolate tour when you only have 5 minutes in a chocolate store. That’s my only complaint!

We booked our tour here and, all kidding aside, really enjoyed ourselves. In my very limited wine experience, I am only really familiar with Italian wines and wines from around the Finger Lakes in NY (Thanks, Christine!). I had a good time exploring what the Hunter Valley had to offer. Next time though, I think I’ll smuggle in more bread!

The rest of our trip was a mix of sightseeing and shopping. We visited the Sydney Opera House, the Bridge, the Rocks (which were mobbed with NYE sightseers) and had dinner with some of Kate’s friends. All and all it was quite the enjoyable trip.

This is my second major Australian city so I’m hoping my next trip with involve some nature action, like the Great Barrier Reefs or something. But you know, not too much nature. I don’t want to tempt the killer sharks, poisons jellyfish and deadly spiders. So like, nature in the form of cute penguins or nature from a distance. You know, safe nature. Yeah…I’m thinking that. I’ll let you know how that pans out.

Oh also, I found this in the airport:

*all wine tour pictures courtesy of Kate and her Iphone. I forgot my camera (!!!) so she let me use her phone most of the day. I definitely appreciated it.