March 25, 2012
Hunter Valley I
Australia Travel March 25, 2012Here are some of the photos I took on my short trip to Hunter Valley with R last month! Starting with my favourite picture taken from t...
Here are some of the photos I took on my short trip to Hunter Valley with R last month!
Starting with my favourite picture taken from the trip:
R having tea with Alice and the Mad Hatter.
This was taken halfway through the day when we visited the HV gardens, but more on that later...
We left Sydney quite early, at around 7am and got into the country-side quite quickly. The scenery was beautiful and the weather was a bit too perfect (read: stinking 30+ degree heat before midday).
Stopped by Cessnock (relatively small town) for some breakfast. Above photo is R's dish, I had a gigantic pancake the size of my head that was so fluffy it was kind of sickening. After walking along the main street for half an hour checking out the op shops, we surrendered to the heat and hopped in the car to keep driving to Pokolbin.
If you see weird splotches in some of the pictures, it's because R's windscreen was dirty. After passing more vineyards and wineries than I can count (later learnt there are close to 100 in that area) we finally get to our hotel/'wine resort'.
Here is the glorious view from our hotel!
After checking in, we decided to go and check out the HV gardens.
Looking at you.
There were all sorts of themed gardens which I took a billion photos of (editing them was awful though, fellow photog enthusiasts know how annoying bright sunlight in the middle of the day can be) but my favourite by FAR was the storybook garden, which I've shown a bit of above. It was a little bit weird to wander around life-sized statues and re-enactments from famous fairytales and children's stories (I went to the toilet in Gretel's room in the gingerbread house) but such a cool place to just run around like kids and forget we're meant to be sensible adults.
At one point I sat down at the table with Alice and friends and chatted with them while having tea from the teapot which I just realised had eyes, before R shouted at me to run over to Humpty Dumpty because he'd found a MASSIVE butterfly which I just had to see.
Weird, I know.
Stopped off for lunch in one of the cafes in the HV garden "village". Turkey and cranberry...
By this time we were pretty much wilting and about to pass out from heat exhaustion so we trudged through the rest of the gardens (the whole place is quite massive ok) and drove back to our hotel room.
Complimentary bottle of bubbly from Tyrell's (nearby winery) on arrival.
I'm not sure where the rest of the day went since it was only afternoon when we got back...I think we took a nap. Now as you know we stayed at Tuscany Wine Resort where they tried to encapsulate the name...the room was very cosy and I give them effort points for attempting to make everything have a rustic appeal but the real clincher was the bed. It was the most comfortable bed I have laid on in my entire life, I kid you not. Sorry for TMI. But now I know why it was as tall as my waist...
We finished off day one with a massively overpriced dinner from Brokenback bar/restaurant. The above 'dish' had 4 tiny pieces of BBQ pork with dipping sauce for around $25 which was very lovely...not. After that we went back to our room and snuggled up in the bed from heaven and watched movies all night until we fell asleep. My kind of day.
That concludes my detailed recount. Anyhow, I'll finish posting day II of Hunter Valley photos (wine tour!) in next post, but right now I need to prepare myself for a 5am start tomorrow to catch the train back up to Newcastle for a busy week of uni ahead. Stay gold!
