Ho, ho...hot?

I just had one of those Zen traveling moments during a walk this evening when I spotted Orion in the sky for the first time, which is the constellation I know best back home. It took me a moment notice that it's upside down (because I'm in the Southern Hemisphere). Then it just hit me just how far away from home I am right now.....and there's no place I'd rather be. :-)

Tomorrow, however, is a different day. I want to be on a sailboat heading out to the Great Barrier Reef........and so it shall be. Summer is finally here (I handed in my last paper of the semester today) and what better way to consummate it then with a vacation? Not just any vacation though. We'll also be celebrating Halley's birthday whilst experiencing a hot weather Christmas and New Years. This should be a blast. I never pictured Christmas and margaritas on the beach as going together but soon it will be a reality.

Take care all and I'll be in touch in two weeks. Expect pictures.

Have a great Christmas and New Years!!

Swill, sniff, sip, swallow, smile.

Summer is here, the weather is wonderful and I'm the only one still doing schoolwork. Despite this fact, we felt the need to do a mini road trip to get the hell outta here for a while. What better place than wine country? Especially since it's right in our backyard!

We took a two day trip to the Yarra Valley and the adjacent Mornington Penninsula, which are famous wine producing regions. If you like Australian wines than you more than likely have seen Yarra Valley on a label or two.

The penninsula is like the Cape Cod of Melbourne in that everyone loves to vacation there because of it's great beaches. And much like Cape Cod in the summer, there were a bunch of events going on on the peninsula (including the Australian Open golf tournament) that resulted in almost EVERY hotel, motel and B&B being booked. We had decided to wing it and didn't book in advance because we didn't have a set itinerary. Dooh!! We ended up driving across the whole peninsula and almost off it before we found one over-priced hotel that didn't have the "NO" on their sign lite up before "VACANCY".

All-in-all we ended up hitting 11 wineries, tried a ton of different wines and even bought a few bottles. Being the designated driver my tastings went something like swill, sniff, sip, spit as opposed to swill, sniff, sip, swallow, smile. Actually, I had a fair amount but just paced myself.

We did a little hiking on day two at the Author's Seat State Park. However, this was a wine drinking trip so we tried to keep the exercise to a minumum.
















Here I am enjoying the view and trying not to exercise.












Christine and Sarah on the pier on Kennon Cove on the Mornington Peninsula. It was a cold and drizzly morning but that didn't stop us from having some fun. That's right, fun.... ...on a pier. Hey, it can happen! We mostly disturbed the fisherman who didn't look happy to see us. We moved on.














This is a view on the Red Hill Estate on the Mornington Peninsula. Notice the grape vines and the wonderful view in the background. Most of the wineries on the peninsula had a beautiful view. It made for a great day.









This was one of my favorite parts of the trip. The peninsula has a couple of hedge mazes and this one (the Ashcombe Maze) is supposed to be the best. We got there right when it opened and we had the place to ourselves for a while. It was pretty cool. There were two hedge mazes that were big enough to get turned around for a while. I love that stuff! There's nothing like a hedge maze to bring out the kid in you. Hehe. In case you're wondering, yes I did make loud noises and stomp my feet to try to scare some kids. And it worked. Hehe. ;-)

Stay tuned people. We are going on a two week trip to the Great Barrier Reef at the end of December. Pictures will surly be coming. I hope you all had a nice Thanksgiving. We had some excellent lasagna made by Christine and Sarah. We shared it with Ali and her father Albert who was visiting from NYC.