Hunter Valley: Wine, Chocolate, Cheese and Beer

When I think of a trip I made to the Yarra Valley two years ago, it is the rolling hills and wide open spaces I miss most. I try to get out of the cityscape as much as I can, and this time we did on a Kangarrific Tour to the Hunter Valley.

And I am glad I did. Because Sam gave us a very fine touristy tour of the Hunter Valley (you can't get more touristy than a tour that starts off with kangaroos and koalas), and we lapped it all up like very good Tourism Australia-versed tourists. 

Right before we turned into each stop, Sam would play a song he picked for its relevance to what we were about to stop by for. And then it would be off the bus like a jolly group of dwarves singing as they enter a great hall of lots and lots of drink and mirth...

Three wine tastings, chilli chocolate, five different cheeses, a very generous portion of blue cheese beef burger and chocolate beer later, the winds cutting through the screens didn't matter, we could run against those winds, we could have gelato in the chilly outside, we were rolling out jokes on the bus like we were old friends. We were on vacation.

Sydney Revisited

Its interesting holidaying in a place you have lived in before. We were taking a vacation, yes, but it also felt like we were traveling back to a second home. It also felt like we were traveling back to a past chapter of our lives. Matt was excited to go back to the apartment block he used to live in for the three months he was posted to Sydney on work. We met his ex-colleagues for lunch at the Sydney Olympic Park next to his old workplace and spent a night having dinner, dessert and supper with friends he made at church. We also met with my ex-colleagues, and discovered my old apartment was sitting right next to his all along. In a way, we were sharing a common experience from before, but we also realised how different our impressions of, and personal encounters in, Sydney were. Sure, we lived in the same neighbourhood, watched the same TV and walked the same streets. But we had also taken to this then new place differently, also in part due to different circumstances. He had a car and the suburbs were more accessible. Most of my time was spent in and around the city center, where we lived.

It was nice to know that most of what we remember hasn't changed. Sydney was some kind of milestone for each of us. It was the first time we had traveled to and lived in a foreign country for work; so it was only natural then when we stood in front of our old residences and looked into the lobby that I felt a slight surge of the same youthful excitement that I had been bubbling over four years ago as I lugged my bags to the lifts, down the corridor and into my first work-paid flat in a city. I remember as I had gone up and up the lifts I had thought and thought to myself how much more of the world I would like to see and how much more I could do to achieve that. I had felt like I was going places and had been chewing on the edges of a very large oyster.

It also got me thinking, how I have changed since. How I no longer bubbled with the same excitement walking down Darling Harbour, or spending a night out with friends, drinks and a good meal in a nice new establishment in the city. And as we brunched in Surrey Hills and shopped in Oxford Street, browsed the old bookstores in Newtown and dined at the likes of Cafe Sopra, Four Ate Five and Masuya, I couldn't help but think about how they compared to back home, even though I was on a holiday, even though I was in someplace familiar like a second home.

Here We Go Again

It feels a little silly, saying hello all over again.

That's right, Nikki's blogging again!

I am creating yet another space to write for myself again, and more particularly; about food, travel and anything amusing in between. I have just returned from a week in Sydney, eating, eating, wining, eating, meeting with friends from a previous life in the city, thinking, thinking and realising that everything has slipped and is slipping by fast. Everything that has not been captured in photographs has been too easily forgotten.

To beat this, I will keep a visual journal here to process, sort and recollect parts of my everyday I think I would want to look back and remember. And maybe get to relive a little of what was going through my mind during those moments.

And if you are there, dear reader, and have a food or travel tip or two, or just a thought, please feel free to drop by and give me a shout :)