Tuesday, April 22, 2008

Barossa Valley Trip!! Teach me the real meaning of wine!!

If you are a wine lover, Barossa Valley will be a place that you will like to visit. Situated in a strategic place surrounded by moutains, Barossa Valley has the suitable climate that favors the growth of vines which makes it to be the producer of 70 percent of the wines for all over the world ( Tour guide 2008 ). There are around 200 vineyards in Barossa Valley and you can have your own sweet time testing all different kind of wines from different vineyards. If you wish to buy a good and unique wine, that will be a nice place for you.


Departed at 8.40am from the Adelaide city, we were brought to the Barossa Valley by a small van driven by a special tour guide ( He is indeed special as he was once a teacher and a principle before. ). Along the way, we enjoyed sight-seeing and chatting with each other. There are 15 of us and yeah, we indeed occupied the whole bus!! haha. As I have mentioned above, Barossa Valley is a VALLEY that surrounded by mountains which means we need to pass some winding roads before we get there. It was like riding a roller coaster which had made some of us to feel nauseous.


The first stop is the big rocking horse ( a small wild life park and a toy shop )that give us the chance to experience the feeling of touching kangaroos, sheeps , peacocks and wallabies!!. Trust me, it was really fun to take pictures with all the animals while you can be so close with them. The animals weren't restricted inside the cage and we were allowed to do whatever we want with the condition we must not harm the animals. I bet you will see a lot of camera with different brands taken out by the tourist. Why the place is called the big rocking horse?? Simple! There is one huge rocking horse in that place. How big is it? The world biggest rocking horse!! It is almost 4 story high and if you are interested please feel free to vist my face book to have a look of that amazing horse. I didn't went up there as we needed to pay a few dollars to do so.


After that is the wine testing section. During this trip, we visited four vineyards which produces different taste of wine. For the wine rookies like us, we couldn't differentiate the tastes between the wines initially. However, after a few cups, the wines started to become familiar and we managed to get their names from their taste. Sorry to say that I couldn't remember the names of all the vineyards we visited. If you want more information, you may go to joyce's blog to find out their names. I am blur huh.. Yes, I am.. haha.. All kinds of expression could be seen during the wine testing.. But most of them said " Eww.. so bitter.. I prefer carbonated drinks more..". Haha. Among us there are a few people allergic to alcohol too. Several of them even had their faces as red as tomatoes after drinking certain amount of wine. hahaha..

All the vineyards are beautifully decorated with wine-related products and it gave me a feelings that I was in a bar. The adventure to these vineyards was indeed worth of the money we had spent for it. The experience was further colourized by the astonishing meal we had for our lunch. Again, I had the pitures in my facebook and I would provide you all a link to view the wonderful picture I had.

Our last checkpoint will be the whispering wall, a dam with a special property that allows the voice to transfer from one side of the dam to another. The people from the other side can hear us clearly even we whispered. The wonderfulness of engineering and architecture had stunned us in our last stop of the trip.

It was a lovely and nice day to be remembered of. After having my first trip in Australia, I hope I can have a few more in the coming holidays. It will be wonderful if 15 of us can have a trip together again!!

Photos: http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1209947109

please remember to sign up first before you click the link. you need to have a face book account before you can view my photos. sorry for the inconvenience i have made. haha.

1 comment:

Te Ying said...

haha, finally Barossa Valley is up... i dun rmb wat d tour guide said... =S