Tamar Valley

Before I get started on my account of the rest of our holiday, I just need to say - ARRRRRRRRRRGH, I hate dealing with companies on the phone, especially phone/internet ones!!  Jeremy tried his best to set this up before we moved, but due to the sheer incompetence of these lovely people, who knows when it will actually happen!  I'm on the phone right now and the saying "please bear with me" is actually driving me insane.  We are using prepaid internet on a stick, but we just want the real thing set up!!  Alright, now to think of better, calmer, more peaceful things...

With our holiday coming to an end, we needed to drive back up towards the Launceston area.  For the next portion of our trip, we were booked into the Tamar Valley Resort for two nights and I was looking forward to it.  We also had a wine tour of the Tamar Valley booked in, which is a welcome addition to any trip!

 On the way to the Tamar, we stopped to eat in Sheffield - also known as the 'town of murals'.  Incidentally, most towns seemed to have some sort of theme.  For example, we also drove through the 'town of topiary'.  Our lunch at Yvette's diner was incredible!  We just shared a club sandwich and a salad, but they were amazing!  We were both really happy with the decision to stop there.

 Another stop we made was the Seven Sheds Brewery and Meadery.  Basically, this guy has created a brewery in his backyard.  We did a quick tasting and bought a bottle of mead just for the hell of it.

 Breakfast on the little back porch of our villa.  Yum!

 The inside of the villa.

 The next few shots are of the wine tour we went on.  These hilarious scraggly vines and the little cabin down below belong to an 80-something year old man who was a great story teller.  All the wines he has available are from 2004 and were very reasonably priced.  He planted the scraggly vines so he could have a 'legitimate' cellar door to sell his wines from.  It was definitely worth the experience.

 This was the cash register at Marion's Vineyard.  It was the first time our tour guide stopped in at this winery and I'm really glad we did.  It had a total hippie vibe.  It was the 4th vineyard opened in Tasmania - the owners moved from California and set up on this beautiful piece of land.  They were out that day, but their son who was visiting from LA was manning the cellar door and he had no idea what he was doing. It looked like he had partied with friends all night and he didn't know anything about the wines, but that made it even more memorable!

Beautiful view from Marion's Vineyard

At another vineyard, they had a pig who was trained to sit when you fed him apples.  Note the electric fence - one of the girls in our group had a shocking experience!

 Around 2 pm we finally got to the winery we were going to have lunch at.  Jeremy and I shared this yummy antipasto plate.  We went to a couple of wineries after that - most notably the final one, where the lady was clearly cranky, annoyed that we hadn't come earlier in the day, and told some other customers that was was just 'over it'.  Yikes! 

Group photo of our fellow wine tourers - Johnny and Lorraine (from Sydney) on the left, J and I in the middle, and Dex (lives in Melbourne) on the right.  She was touring with her mum who was visiting from India.

 Back at our resort, I needed to get a picture of the little village.  It's meant to resemble a Swiss village.

This boat brought back childhood memories for Jeremy.

 We climbed up to this lookout where you could see down across the Tamar Valley.  Just something to do!

Hungry!

 On the day we were set to go back to Launceston, we drove to the top of the Tamar Valley and stopped in at Jansz cellars.  They are probably the most recognized name of the Tasmanian wine market.

 We found a goat cheese factory on our travels and stopped for lunch.  This adorable little girl is only 4 weeks old.  Is now the right time to mention that we tried goat salami?