2015_xmas

2015 Christmas - Wine tour in Margaret River Valley (MRV), Australia

We flew to Perth, rented our Audi A4 (Alan forgetting that he had to learn how to drive on the "other side of the road"), and drove for 3 hours to get to our motel-like lodging in MRV. The saving grace was that it was a short walk to the quaint downtown. We had a great dinner at Morrie's.

The next day we started our tours. Cullen Winery was pretty, superb chardonnay, but the restaurant was open for breakfast / brunch yet. Too bad. We stopped by Howard Park and loved the interior design. Then we met up with Jen & Stephen at Vasse Felix, where they hooked us up with a free tasting on their beautiful restaurant's balcony. We dropped in to Woodbury, another winery with award winning wines but they were sold out of the ones we wanted. We drove back to MRV, walked around downtown enjoying ice cream and meat pies, before retiring to our motel, where we at Indian food at their pub and then watched Harrison Ford in Clear and Present Danger on a small TV with a ton of Aussie commercials (mostly trucks and campers).

We had another full day of wineries, starting off at the stunning Voyager winery, where we had "high tea" of scones and chocolate cake. We lazed around Xanadu at noon, before going to Leeuwin for a late lunch. Probably the best oysters I've ever eaten was at their restaurant. Afterwards, ML napped while Alan had fun shopping at the supermarket Coles. We had a simple salad and then gave up on Rush Hour 2, mostly because the commercials were so bad.

Final day, we had our last lunch in MRV at Flutes, the restaurant on the gorgeous Woodlands Winery. We visited the MRV Chocolate Factory, before heading back to Perth. ML then flew off to Sydney -> LAX -> HNL, while Alan slept the night in town, and then flew to Taipei for New Year's Eve.