OZ - South Australia March 25 - March 28

Back on the mainland, while traveling to the Barossa wine valley we stopped in a quaint town in Adelaide Hills called Hahndorf settled by the Germans in the 1800's. This meant traditional German architecture, great German food and even better German beer. We soaked it all up and finished with a German pastry from the local bakery for the road.




The Barossa wine valley is much like the Napa region in Calif and known as the Shiraz wine producing capital of the country (at least to us). We got a room for the night and in the late morning we started out for tastings at a reasonable hour in the morning. Our first stop, Penfolds. This winery is known for some of the best wines in the country and we fell in love with Bin 389, otherwise know as the Baby Grange because they use the barrels from their Grange bottling the previous vintage for this wine and it is made by the same wine maker. Grange is their premium estate Shiraz. Tom wanted to try the Grange but it was $200 for just a tasting!!!!!


We also went to several other wineries including Two Hands, Seppletsfield (where the guy spent a lot of time with us and even let us taste their 25 year old tawny port), Wolf Blass and Yalumba. Yalumba is the oldest winery in Australia and still family owned. Their estate and cellar door (tasting room) was definitely the most beautiful of the bunch. Then because it was the next day, we decided we could stop at Penfold's again for one more taste of Bin 389!!!!!

The people in the cellar doors in the Barossa spent a lot of time with us personally and were remarkably informative and friendly. Once again, we found the people to be fantastic. It was a great education on the wines from the valley and the whole region.
Unfortunately, we had to sober up and drive to Adelaide for the next two days. When we got to Adelaide, we realized it was too much like a city so we did our usual, we bugged out! No worries!, we found Glenelg.

Glenelg is a small residential beach community that still has the flavor of a working town. It's much like a Long Beach on LI. But the best part was the Professional World Volleyball Tour was there and an event had just started. We started following the men's and women's US teams and even got to see several of the US teams play on the center court. We saw a great match between one of the US men's teams and Germany. The German fans were absolutely crazy and made the match a great time (but the US won)......The atmosphere was fun but intense because all of the teams are vying for spots to make the Olympic teams for Beijing. The finals were after we left, so we don't know who won, but we have decided to become beach volleyball groupies! We figured they must play on the nicest beaches in the world!









It was time to leave South Australia and get on the plane to fly to Queensland, home of the Great Barrier Reef. Next stop Airlie Beach.