McLaren Vale

A great Sunday drive!

Our goal for the day was to check out one of the premier wine producing regions.  I chose this tour because it started in downtown Adelaide and finished up right near where we were staying.  

Victoria Square, downtown Adelaide

We started in Victoria Square, the center of the city.  North to south, the main street is King William Avenue, after the king who authorized the settlement.  The German who designed the city, said no man should cross the king, so all the streets to the west have different names from the streets going to the east.  

The entire center city is surrounded by parks, with plenty of sporting facilities for everyone to enjoy.  We even saw where they hold a Formula One race on the east side. 

Adelaide is the driest city in the driest state in the driest continent in the world.  They only get about 20 inches of rain per year.  What saves the city is the hills to the east... rain fall there comes down into the Adelaide basin.

Our route went up into the hills on a freeway, but soon turned into narrow roads.

 

We saw signs for kangaroo and koala, but the only wildlife we saw were farm animals (including alpaca).

Our first winery was Shingleback.  It is named for a local lizard.

statue of the winery's namesake

We tasted seven wines from this award winning winery, including three of their new Bio Project -- they have brought in and cultivated birds and insects that feed off the pests that harm the vineyards, so much so that they don't use pesticides on those vineyards.  We were about a week away from when they will be picking some of these varieties.

a refreshing white wine

the Bio Project Rose

almost ready to pick - covered to keep the birds away from the grapes

Everywhere you look, are vineyards.

Our second winery started out as a church.  When the winery got the property, they expanded the chapel into a great tasting room.

The building in the center is the original chapel.

When you walk into the tasting room, you are greeted by stained glass windows that have grape vines.

We tasted 5 wines here.  By the time we finished, everyone was telling stories and enjoying themselves.

2 couples from Sydney, 2 fellows from Newcastle, and many stories

From here, we headed down the hill to the beach, getting some spectacular views of the entire Adelaide area.  

the coast south of Adelaide

downtown Adelaide on the horizon

Brighton Beach, south of Glenelg:

life saving boats

the Brighton jetty

too bad, these are not real

All Japan Day

When you hear engines revving up at 7 am, it tends to get your attention.  I look out from the balcony and see a line of cars coming into the park below me.

All Japan Day

They kept coming and coming and coming.  

By 10, they had closed off this park and were routing cars to the park in the next block.  We could not figure out what was going on, so we googled it.  Turns out the local car club was celebrating Japanese cars.  All those cars paid $25 each to participate.  They are raising money for a local ambulance service.  

cars and vendors

and the crowds come!

Glenelg SLSC

First the weather report... the 100+ degree temperatures are gone!!!  That cold front produced rain overnight and it's a comfortable 72 at 2 pm.  

Can't run the scooter in the rain, so we hung around the apt.  After lunch it was off to the Marina and the beach.  

Marina Pier complex 

The Marina Pier complex was built for the tourist trade.  On the bottom floor are a series of restaurants (see the white tents in the center of the pic). The marina has one catamaran that does a dolphin watching cruise and charters out for other cruises.

marina

Part of the complex sits on what was a long-time seaside amusement park, complete with a large roller coaster.  The wooden coaster was destroyed in a storm, and the area is now a hotel.

Walking  south down the beach from behnd the hotel, there was a lot of activity.  Saturday, it seems, is training day for the GSLSC.  

restaurant on top floor; boats and training on ground floor

paddleboards lined up for a test

These guys did a three-part race.  First leg on paddleboards - they had to launch into the surf, paddle out around two buoys, then return to a marker about 100ft down the beach.  Once there, they switched to a kayak and paddled the same course (in reverse).  When they got back to the starting marker, they dropped their kayak and paddles and returned to the water and swam the same course (against some good swells).  I thought it was all teenagers, but the guy who came in second, had to have been in his 40s.  Showed those young lads a thing or two.

All this was supervised by multiple water safety officers and their portable life saving truck.

Just as the race was done, all the training classes showed up.

nine- & eleven-year-olds gather
 for paddleboard training

eight-year-olds ready for a race

seven-year-olds picking up their gear to head for the beach

It was impressive to watch.  Something for all ages.
 

Our Neighborhood

Woke up today facing another hot day.  First thing that greeted us was pictures of snow in Waldport.

view from our Oregon house to the south

We had several weather notifications on our phones... winter storm warning on the Oregon coast and continued heat wave here.  I picked up my phone at one point and saw 0 for the current reading in Waldport --a bit shocking until I realized my phone was reporting in C.  But 32 is still cold for Oregon.  Our neighbors reported that highway 34 between Waldport and Corvallis was closed - a combo of snow and downed trees.  And apparently Portland got 10 inches of snow.  At 9 am we were at 87 degrees, but then we picked up a strong breeze and never got to the century mark.  

By the end of the day a cold front was starting to move in from Western Australia... high was only in the 90s.

clouds moving in from the west

Today we hung around the nieighborhood and took care of household duties.  With a load of laundry in the washer, we headed down to the public library to print out our boarding passes and baggage tags for the cruise.  [NCL released the check-in documents 21 days before the cruise, right as we were leaving Waldport.  Got everything filled out, only to be told it would be 24- to 48-hours before we could get the final documents.  With no printer in Maui or Sydney, we were trying to figure out when we'd get a chance to print things... and as we came back from Adelaide, we walked right past the Holdfast Bay Public Library.  BINGO!] 

Our apartment is right across from Colley Preserve, a tree-lined park.

Liberty Towers from Colley Preserve

The park is heavily used... joggers, kids and dogs playing, and there was even what looked like a class.  

We ventured across the park to the local life saving club.

If you were to Google this, you would see one of the traditional clubs where they train life guards who can launch boats into the high surf to rescue swimmers.  

This club, however, also runs a popular restaurant on the second floor of the local amusement park, overlooking the beach.  It's open to the public, so we decided celebrate Friday with happy hour and dinner here.  And enjoy a little people watching.

view from the deck - over lawn and six beach volleyball courts

Kids coming back from the beach... decided to wait for Mom to get the car.  They put both surfboards and all the kids inside a midsize SUV.  The surfboards were perched on the front seat headrests and the kids were under them in the back seat!!

getting in a last volleyball game befoe sunset

Adelaide

Adelaide is the capital of South Australia (fourth most populous of the eight states).  It is much more provincial than Sydney.   The buildings seem smaller and older, and the roads seem wider.  We rode into town on the tram -- they have two lines that run out to the beach, so there's one about every 10 minutes.  At 9 a.m. rush hour is over, so it was only $2.25 to go all the way to town.  

Town Hall from the Victoria Square tram platform

Another hot day, so we headed to the Botanical Gardens where we knew we'd find some shade.  

 

dahlias

Amazon water lillies

hibiscus

In one corner of the park was an interesting glass fountain.  

it looks like a wave

the curl

the surfer in the curl!

In addition to the plants, the gardens attract some interesting bird life.  There were more ibis and Noisy Miners (like we saw in Sydney), some crested doves (who wouldn't sit still for a pic), some ducks, and a whole flock of parrots feeding on the berries of one of the trees.

feeding upside down

My ultimate goal was the National Wine Centre of Australia, located next to the Botanical Gardens. Adelaide is surrounded by wine regions -- the Barossa Valley north of here is one of the oldest in Australia.  There's also the Adelaide Hills, Eden Valley and McClaren Vale. 

The Wine Centre sounded like a good place, but it was disappointing.  Only one exhibit was open.  Their short film covered only a few of regions in the other states.

I had been to the Hunter Valley north of Sydney on my last trip and I had been to the Milawa region north of Melbourne on my first, so I knew more than what they presented.  

The Centre is associated with the University of Adelaide, and it appeared that there were at least three seminars or meetings going on throughout the building.  The only thing worth seeing was their wine cellar, which they claim is the largest in all of Australia.  

I did like the wall treatment on the front of their wine bar... a few recycled wine boxes

We will just have to go visit some of the wineries on our own.  

We headed back into town. (Within the Central Business District the trams are free and there are some free buses, so it is easy to get around.)

The Botanical Gardens are out on the tram line that goes past the University and the state art museum, so there were some interesting sights.

doesn't your school have a spaceman in front of it?

not sure if the lawn chairs are part of the art

typical English King statue

We did notice these purple scooters all over town.

Apparently it's like those cities that have free bikes that anyone can ride.  Here it is these electric scooters, with their matching helmets.  

We visited the Adelaide Central Market -- much like the European markets we have visited, under one roof we found all sorts of stalls, restaurants, and even a Chinese Casino.  You could get soup to nuts... so we came home with the fixings for dinner.