Kathleen
Hunter Valley and Blue Mountains, New South Wales, Australia – March 29-April 1, 2016
After five days in the city, altough wonderful, we were ready to head out to the hills. The first day we drove to the Hunter Valley and a city called Pokolbin, which is the epicenter of the Hunter Valley Wine Region. It is for very good reason that Australia is well known for its wines, we were able to go to several tasting rooms and experienced some absolutely lovely local pink, white and red whines, the Chardonnay and Shiraz being the highlights. We had the most marvelous lunch overlooking one of the vineyards, and after another couple of wineries, we returned to our little cottage for a nap! It was a lovely day in the hills.
The next day we followed an excellent, if windy, road through the mountains to Leura in the Blue Mountains. The Blue Mountains area is actually a gigantic gorge with a tropical-like forest at the floor. Steve and I had fun exploring the gorge and running up and down the 900ish stairs, while Aunt Mo found her pace on a Hop-on/off bus tour and a funicular/gondola trip to the floor of the gorge and back. It was a simply gorgeous (?!) gorge and a lovely little town. The weather was perfect, about 70 degrees and clear blue skies. The bus driver on the hop bus said it was the clearest day he had seen in years of driving this route. At night we could see the milky way from our backyard. We cooked our own pasta dinner at the lovely old cottage we rented the first night and had an excellent Mediterranean meal in Leura the next night. We are finding that while eating out seems to be fairly expensive, the meals have been absolutely wonderful and inventive at almost every turn.
Next day, back to Sydney early early for a morning flight to Uluru and a visit to Ayers Rock.