Adelaide, Australia

Hey!

Well Adelaide has come to an end. We thought we'd literally have nothing to do here except catch up on sleep, and well we did have a 12 hour sleep after we arrived, but then there was plenty of sight-seeing to be done. On our first day here we went to check out the city. There isn't too much really to see around the city itself, but we found the casino, and went to the Adelaide Oval, walked to North Adelaide to O'Connell Street, yes right, O'Connell Street!! Then we checked out Rundle Mall, which is the centre of it all, an Opal Gem Mine and the highliht of our day - the Haigh's Chocolate Factory tour. Well the tour itself wasn't the best, but we did get free chocolate =D

After spending over an hour in the tourist information office, we planned our next days here. On Day 2, we got on a bus up to Mount Lofty (for views of the entire city) and then up to Cleland Wildlife Park. Well we went to the wildlife park by accident really, but nevertheless it's always good to see kangaroos and koalas!! :) After this we went up to Hahndorf. This is a picturesque German town on the edge of the Adelaide Hills. It really was so beautiful, like stepping back in time, in a German village of course! :p And that night it was time to check out the much anticipated Angels and Daemons movie at the cinema :)

Day 3 (today) , our last full day here we had booked a trip up to the Barossa Valley. The tour started with a stop in Gumeracha to see the world's biggest Rocking Horse! Yes you heard me right. And the best part is you get to climb it too! Afterwards we were off to stop at our first of 4 wineries for the day, and what a place to start - Wolf Blass. We've even heard of this wine in Ireland! :) Well 3 (smaller) wineries later, and a few nice viewing points, we were headed back to Adelaide. Unfortunately we didn't get to stop at the other big winery in the Barossa Valley, Jacobs Creek, but nevertheless it was a great tour anyway. Oh I almost forgot to mention, our last stop before heading back to Adelaide was to the Barossa Reservoir, aka the Whispering Wall. It's crazy, it's like a natural phenomenom whereby if you stand at one side of the wall, and some-one else stands at the other side, 140 metres away, you can just talk normally/whisper and you can hear each other!!

So tomorrow we fly over to the Gold Coast to start our East Coast trip in Byron Bay.

Chat later,
Cathy x x