One of the days we were staying with Neil and Noreen out in Blackburn, Noreen took us wine tasting! We went to 2 or 3 wineries, Chandon, TarraWarra Estates, and Train Trak. Chandon is where we started right when they opened and enjoyed a lovely champagne tasting and a neat self guided tour of the champagne making facilities.

Stefan with our lovely host Noreen

TarraWarra Estates had lovely grounds (just like Chandon) with the tasting room overlooking a pond, and a lovely art museum.  We caught some of the William Delafield Cook Survey, a photo of one of my favorite pieces is below.  The wine at the adjoining winery was pretty good, but not great so we did not purchase anything there.

Our last winery of the day was Train Trak, a really small winery that was built right next to some abandoned train tracks that you actually had to drive over to get to the winery.  They had some really yummy wines and we picked one up and enjoyed it at the house one day.

Overall our quick trip to the Yarra Valley wine region was fantastic, and it was so nice having Noreen show us all around (and drive!).  We hope to make it out to the wine region again, especially as it's only about 45 minutes to an hour away.  

Introducing Our Home!

When we first arrived in Melbourne we were lucky enough to get to stay with Neil and Noreen, friends of Stefan's mom, Chris, who we had met once before.  They were amazing hosts, we had agreed beforehand to stay for 2-3 days and in the end they let us stay for 7!  They have a beautiful house not too far from the city, so that was our home base while we searched for more permanent housing.

After much searching and seeing quite a few houses and taking copious notes and photos along the way we finally found the perfect place! We have 2 flatmates, Erin and Simon, who are both really cool people that we're enjoying getting to know.  The suburb is Brunswick East, so its a 20 minute tram ride to the heart of the city, and we're a 3 minute walk to Lygon St. which has a lot of great cafes, bars, and restaurants.  There's also a park nearby where we have gone jogging and slacklining, and the grocery store is about an 8 minute bike ride away. Basically we're loving it.   

This photo features a wild Stefan seen in his natural habitat!

 And that's our new home!  We are absolutely smitten with it. We have a couch! And carpets! And don't have to brush our teeth in the kitchen! Ahh the little things in life. (Although if you remember our old place in Sydney you can understand how this is a serious upgrade.)  And it's not really a part of our house but the quickest way to the tram stop/main street is through this adorable little park with gorgeous overhanging trees. More updates coming soon!

Melbourne

So, we've moved to Melbourne!  Get ready for some upcoming posts on the epic drive from Sydney to Melbourne, and on our fantastic new house.  (hopefully the post after that will be about our fancy new jobs...)

Melbourne is absolutely fantastic.  Much flatter than Sydney so it's easy to bike all over, and probably the best coffee in the country if not much of the world. We're loving it so far!

Our Tasmania Trip!

Wooowww.... so it turns out that this is the first post in 364 days! (Maybe 365? Was 2011 a leap year?)

This post was originally just going to be a quick rundown of what's happened in the past year but a few events I just couldn't sell short, so our trip to Tasmania get's its own post.  About 11 months after we actually took the trip, but who's counting?

So Tasmania, fondly referred to as Tassie, is a state of Australia that is actually an island off the south of Australia.  (Sort of like Hawai'i).  It's very rural, with two "big" cities--Hobart and Launceston.  To call Launceston a city is really pushing it, although Hobart definitely did fit the criteria.  We camped for part of the trip in Freycinet National Park, and couchsurfed in Launceston and Hobart, staying at a hostel for the last night in Launceston before our flight.  We absolutely loved everywhere there.  We even talked about how neat it would be to retire there.  Everyone we couchsurfed with was absolutely amazing and did all sorts of neat things.  The people in Launceston had an amazing garden and they did compost and worm farming to help with the garden (and of course to cut down on waste).  Some of the people we stayed with in Hobart were vegan/freegan, so they'd eat vegan unless of course they found it (usually via dumpster diving) and then it didn't have to be vegan.  We also stayed with a family in Hobart, and the mom taught French at a school and shared all sorts of neat French music with me.  Even without touring the area we had quite an education just from the people we stayed with!

But below are some pictures from the trip and rundowns of some of the highlights.  The trip was all in all absolutely amazing.  The pictures are a bit out of order in terms of when they happened in the trip, so please don't use the order below as any sort of idea about our itinerary because geographically it would make 0 sense if we did it this way.

Going to the Museum of Old and New Art (MONA) in Hobart, Tasmania. - Where ancient artwork (old arrowheads, ancient Egyptian artifacts, etc...) is interspersed with contemporary art.  The museum was very new when we visited (less than a month since the opening), and it was fantastic.  The tour was all self directed with information being delivered on an ipod touch with headphones.  The device would geolocate your spot in the museum and you chose which piece you were looking at.  They would have music to coincide with the piece, or an interview with the artist or museum curator, or other interesting things to add to learning about the piece.  Truly an amazing museum experience.

Visiting the Boag's Brewery in Launceston, Tasmania. Got the full brewery tour and a tasting to boot!

Wineglass Bay - Long, strenuous hike in, but you're rewarded with one of the best beaches in the world (Outside magazine said it, so it must be true), shaped like the bowl of a wineglass.

Bruny Island Cruise - Bruny island is an island off the southern tip of Tasmania.  (We joked that we were on an island off the south of Tasmania, which is an island off the south of Australia, which is an island off the south of Asia.  We're not sure anyone else thought this was as funny as we did.) We took a ferry over to the island and drove to the boat cruise place we'd booked!

Our adorable rental car that was our trusted steed through our Tasmanian Adventure!

The water was absolutely this blue, it was amazing! Also this is the southernmost Stefan and I have each been!

Drive from Hobart up to Launceston - this meant driving straight through the middle of Tasmania, from bottom to top.  We saw a lot of great landscapes and had some crazy weather changes along the way.

SNOWWW!!!

And then about 15 minutes later blue skies and green grass.

We got this great pic (yeah dual citizenship!) at an American style diner somewhere on the road. 

We went to go see some awesome caves I read about. They were closed because of flooding. But we saw a goat. Totally makes up for it right? Yeah I didn't think so either.

Cataract Gorge - in Launceston

So thats all for the Tasmanian trip.  A lot more happened over the course of 2011 but we may have to breeze through them.  Get ready for an update on what's happening now very soon!

- E & S