Author Archives: Alyce

Kangaroo Island and Dinner with the Wallabies!

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Well, we FINALLY made it to Kangaroo Island after a really long day of traveling yesterday.  It was a 5 hour drive from Coonawarra (Thank God for the iPad and TV shows) to the ferry.  The ferry was about an hour, then it was another 2 hour drive to reach our vacation rental.  But we made it!  We left around 9 am and got here around 6:30pm.

Kangaroo Island is Australia’s third largest island (after Tasmania and Melville).  It is located South West of Adelaide.  Because of its remote location, there is much more wildlife and unspoiled scenery than there is in some of the bigger areas of Australia.

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Coonawarra

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Today, we continued our drive towards Kangaroo Island, stopping in one of Australia’s main wine growing regions – Coonawarra.  The weather in Coonawarra is much warmer than New Zealand.  This region is known for making some really beautiful big red wines.  This is the type of wine that Justin and I prefer.  We love going to Napa to try all the great Cabernet Sauvignon.  Coonawarra is the most similar style to Napa that we have seen so far.

We visited three vineyards: Parker Estate, Majella, and Penley Estate.  We really enjoyed all three of them.

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Great Ocean Road

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We left Melbourne yesterday.  I didn’t want to leave the hotel!  The next few days, we are going to be roughing it.  I keep referring to it as “camping” and Justin keeps telling me that I clearly don’t know what camping means.  I have to admit that Girl Scout troop 552 was more like troop Beverly Hills.

Anyway, while I packed up the hotel, Justin walked to pick up the rental car.  It’s really nice!  It is a Camry, and we think it’s brand new…..still has the new car smell!

We stopped at Shadowfax vineyard on our way out of Melbourne to do our first Australian wine tasting.  We really enjoyed trying all of the different wine and seeing how it compared to New Zealand.  One thing that we tried was sparkling Shiraz.  It was pretty good, but I don’t think that I could drink too much of it.  I can barely drink a whole glass of Champagne.

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Melbourne

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Hi everyone! Sorry for the retro review yesterday.  We didn’t get home from dinner until kinda late and, honestly, I didn’t feel like doing a post.  We were only in Melbourne for three nights, and they went by really quickly! We are already on our way to the Great Ocean Road!  The Great Ocean Road is a coastal drive will lots of things to do along the way, plus some beautiful places to stop and take pictures. At least that’s what Justin in telling me. Most of the time I have no clue where we are going until we get there!

Anyway, back to Melbourne……..

Yesterday, we spent some more time walking around the city (although, I REALLY didn’t want to leave the hotel room).  We intended to walk to the Royal Botanical Gardens.  Unfortunately, we never actually made it there.  We saw some of the park, but it was so hot and sunny that I could literally feel my skin scorching…….oh the lucky dermatologist who gets to see me after this trip…….!

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Hello again, Australia

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Well, we left New Zealand today.  I doubt that we will ever see a place again that is so naturally beautiful.  We truly loved our time there.

We flew Air New Zealand from Queenstown to Melbourne. The flight was about 3 hours long and uneventful.  Justin edited some pictures while I took a nap and watched The Office and Parks and Recreation.

In Melbourne, we are staying at The Park Hyatt.  Justin warned me that we may not get some of the “perks” that we got at the other Hyatt properties because his diamond status expired a couple of days ago, although he knew that we were booked for the base level suite.  Well……move over Tokyo and Sydney, we have a new hotel front runner! Somehow, we got upgraded several levels, and we are staying in the “ambassador suite!”  This place is crazy!  It is about 1800 square feet with a huge living room, giant bedroom, kitchen, guest bathroom, enormous walk-in closet, and ridiculous master bathroom.  I spent the first several minutes jumping on the bed.  I’m pretty sure that’s what most of the guests in this suite do, right?

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Goodbye New Zealand

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Today was our last day in New Zealand.  It has been such an amazing and beautiful country to visit.  I know that we will be back one day, eventually…….

Today, we wanted to take it easy!  In the afternoon, we visited the Kiwi Birdlife Park.

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I’m not sure if I mentioned this, but New Zealanders refer to themselves as “kiwis.”  This term refers to the rare kiwi bird.  It is a flightless bird, which had no natural predators until settlers brought over cats, opossum, and other mammals that killed the baby kiwis.  Now, it is extremely rare to see them in the wild.

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WE WENT SKYDIVING!!

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I can’t believe I actually did it!

Like I said, New Zealand is the “adventure capital of the world!”  There are thrill seeking opportunities around every corner.  Before we got to Queenstown, I looked into skydiving as something I may “hypothetically” want to do.  It sounded great and the company we chose, NZone, has a great reputation.  I feel like I read hundreds of positive reviews.  Apparently, they have done almost 180,000 dives without major injury.  So, I mentioned it to Justin.  I still wasn’t set on the idea.  It sounded good in theory, but why would a sensible person jump out of a perfectly good airplane?  I consider both Justin and I to be very sensible people.

Well, we were halfway through our time in Queenstown, and I still hadn’t decided what I wanted to do.  Luckily, Justin made that decision for me.  He said, “we’re doing it” and he called NZone to book our skydive for the next day at 11 am.  And so the anxiety begins……..

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