Simon & Caroline's World Tour 07/08

This morning I had my Christmas present, it may have been a little late but it was worth waiting for (even if we did have to get up at the ridiculous time of 4:30am!). My Christmas present was a hot air balloon ride over the Hunter Valley and what an experience! We met up with our very cheery and awake(!) hot air ballon pilot at the airport where we were given our safety briefing, the gist being that the landing would be interesting and could take one of three forms - land upright on the ground first time (not likely), bouncing on the ground a few times before coming to a stop (highly possible) or landing and then dragging sideways along the ground for some time (quite probable)! The best thing would be to enjoy the ride and not think about the landing.

We had a fantastic morning for being up in the air and the views were amazing. The valley below us was lush and green (theres been a lot of rain recently!) with rows upon rows of grape vines. We could see mountains in the distance (the great dividing range, I think). But the best view was looking down (and it was a long way down) at the animals the size of dots, we saw cows, horses and a few kangaroos bouncing along. The view upwards was pretty cool (or rather hot!) as you can see from the pic.
Sadly all good things must come to an end and so we began to think about landing. It was a bit hairy. We bounced along the ground several times before stopping but it then felt like we were going to tilt over with maybe some dragging. It certainly got the adrenalin pumping but we survived and enjoyed the obligatory post flight champers. It never tasted so good!
We were all done and dusted and it was only 9am! What to do with the rest of our day? We started with a gourmet breakfast at the Crown Plaza - just a taster of how the other half live.

After a refreshing roadside snooze we headed off to sample some more wine. We found ourselves in Tyrells, one of the oldest wineries in the Hunter in it's 4th generation of family ownership. These guys have been making wine since 1858 so they certainly know what they're doing. The tour of the winemaking process was very interesting and we will be appreciating our next bottle of wine just a little bit more now that we know how much effort went into making it. After the tour we were treated to some tasters and I am pleased to say that Si seems to be coming round to my way of thinking where white wine is concerned so I will no longer be forced to drink whole bottles singlehandedly! (I have been missing you Donna!). I also took a bit of a liking to the expensive, aged red wine - there is no doubt it tastes better - just a shame we can't afford it! After buying several bottles (of the slightly cheaper stuff, alas) we headed off to the smelly cheese shop (that's what it's called!) to spend some more money.

So the next few days will be spent consuming the produce of the Hunter Valley - wine, chocolate and smelly cheese ...yum!