Wednesday July 22nd-Monday July 27th, 2009

Not too much stuff going on these days. Wednesday I had planned on venturing out from Chris’s but it ended up raining pretty much all day, so I just did some laundry and did some cleaning of Chris’s place. I mean the least I can do after him having me stay there is clean up a bit. Friday I went on a wine tour in the Barossa valley, one of Australia’s most famous wine regions. It actually ended up being a gorgeous day. The scenery was spectacular, since SA has been getting so much rain lately (I later found out that it ended up being the rainiest July in SA in something like 10 or 15 years) the hills were so green and lush, it was beautiful to be driving through. There were some very nice people on the tour as well. We stopped at an inn in Nuriootpa for lunch where we had a choice of several different main courses. I choose the kangaroo filet. My first taste of kangaroo! It was good, like beef, but a bit more red and tender. I would definitely eat that again, yum!
Monday I had the intention of jumping on the tram and heading down to Glenelg for the day. Glenelg is a town 20-30 minutes away from Adelaide, it’s right on the water and has that summer beach town kind of feeling. Since the actual city of Adelaide is inland a bit, all the city people go down to the coast on the weekend on a nice day and Glenelg is a popular place for that. I said I had the intention because the day ended up being crappy, with it being rainy all day, so I scrapped that idea and just watched tv instead. Tom and I have gotten into watching the show “Chuck.” The series premiere premiered in Australia a couple months ago and Tom and I happened to catch it and are now loving it. I never watched it in the states, but I am obsessed now, it is a fantastic show! So since Chris is a bit of a technological geek he has this whole set up with his tv hooked up to his computer that has all these movies and and tv shows on it, so he has both the 1st and 2nd seasons of “Chuck” on the computer. So in these rainy, crappy days, I’ve been watching “Chuck” and getting through season 2, it’s been a bit of a marathon actually. I was determined to get through the 2nd season! Which I did, unfortunately Chris is missing the second to last episode of the second season! Which apparently quite a bit happens, so I’ll have to either download it or wait till it airs on tv here.
I did however book a 2 day Kangaroo Island tour. KI is an island just offshore from Adelaide and I’d heard good things about it. I really didn’t want to spend $350 for 2 days but everyone said it’s worth it and I figured while I was here, I should do it or I’d probably regret it. So I booked the trip and of course had to get picked up at 6 am! Yikes! Luckily they said they’d pick me up just a block or so from Chris’s place, that way I didn’t have to get up even earlier to make my way into the city (not that Chris is that far away, but hey, the less distance I have to travel, the better).

Tuesday July 21st, 2009: Change of location

Didn’t do too much during the day except pack up all my stuff to move over to Dave’s son Chris’s place. Dave’s 2 sons, Chris and Stephen live together but Stephen is off in New Zealand skiing for who knows how long, so Chris is letting me stay (although Dave may have guilted him into it) so Dave and Mary can have some QT. Dave, Mary and I headed off to play poker tonight (of which I didn’t do too well, boo) then Damien who had also come to poker took me and dropped me off at Chris’s.

Monday July 20th, 2009: Haigh’s chocolate

Since I am actually writing this blog in the middle of September, I can’t actually remember what happened this past weekend, but odds are nothing too interesting. I spent lots of my time in Adelaide just sort of hanging out not doing too much so that’s probably what happened over the weekend. On Monday I decided to go for a “tour” of Haighs chocolate factory. Haighs is an Australian high end chocolate company. I say tour in quotation marks because they sit you in a room and explain the beginnings of a company, then you go down a hall looking at some photos of the chocolate making process then look through some windows to people making various different chocolate treats. There really wasn’t too much to it and lasted about 20 minutes. I did however get to taste some chocolate and the tour was free, so not too bad of a deal there.

Friday July 17th, 2009 : Mt. Lofty and Hahndorf

Mary was working the 7 am – 7 pm shift today so I Dave and I went out on our own. First we headed over to his middle child’s (Damien) place. Dave and Mary had bought him and his girlfriend a clothes dryer because when they stopped by the other day they had laundry lines hanging across the living room to dry clothes on, so Dave and Mary decided they need a dryer. We dropped it off and Dave installed it for them. Dave and I then headed up to Mount Lofty which has a lookout point over the city. We looked down on to the city and saw off to the peninsulas to the west and east and apparently on a real clear day you can see Kangaroo Island. We however were not able to see the island even though it was a reasonably clear day. It was a nice day though and got a lovely view over the greater city area and the water. We then headed a little bit more east to the city of Hahndorf. Hahndorf is a city that was settled by German settlers and still has a German feel and look to it. Dave and I went to a German hotel/pub for lunch and I did it up right, German style. An imported German beer (300 mL, although I believe I could have gotten the 500 mL or even the liter, just like in Germany ;) ) and a lunch of sausage and french fries. We walked around the town a bit, popping into some stores and having hot chocolate and coffee at a cute little chocolate shop. It was quite a nice day in a cute town.