Perth Day 4: The City and Swan Valley

My last day in Perth already :(.

Enjoyed myself greatly here, even though the weather was so so. Thanks to my Australia loving colleague for suggesting Perth as the starting point of my Australian trip ;).

After cooking for myself for the past three days, I decided that I deserved one night out.

I went for sushi. Love sushi, have it at least once every holiday. Problem is though that I cannot eat sushi with chopsticks ;). I manage to pick up the sushi, rince it with some soy sauce and then take a bite. Then, when I want to take another bite, the rest of the sushi falls apart in the soy sauce ;). Today, as always, I end up eating sushi with my bare hands. All the Japanese people in here must think that I am nuts lol.

I planned to walk around King’s Park a little bit this morning. But when I opened up the curtains of my dorm room: black skies and heavy rain. So no King’s Park. Instead, I went into some shops on Perth’s main streets. Bought some souvenirs. Another magnet and tea spoon for my collections :D.

Around noon I hurried to the bus station for a half day tour through the Swan Valley. I called the touring company this morning to see if I could still participate in this tour. And I could. I was happy that I could still see something of Perth’s surrounding area.

A nice bus driver drove us (ten people and myself, various nationalities) to the Swan Valley, very beautiful and green (probably due to the massive amount of rain here lately ;)). There, at one of the oldest wineries of Australia, we were introduced to our guide, named Andrew. A very enthusiastic man. He had already shown eight people, who had signed up for the full day tour, parts of the Swan Valley in the morning.

Now there were three more wineries, one beer brewery and one chocolate factory to go. As many of you know, I don’t really like wine or beer. But I have found out that there are quite a lot of Western Australian wines and beers that I like :D. I tasted various fruity and soft wines and also some sparkling wines. Hmm, apparently I prefer those types of wine. The lady of one of the breweries told us how goog sparkling wine is made. Normal wine is mixed with yeast (gist). And then, during the period of about a year, this bottle is slowly rotated left-right-up-down. By the end of the year, the yeast has become a mass and has moved to the top of the bottle (from where it can easily be removed). Very interesting information indeed. If I would have been allowed to take liquid in my hand luggage, I would probably have bought one or two bottles of (sparkling) wine. Who would have thought ;).

By then I was swaying to the bus from all the alchohol, just kidding (probably had one glass of wine in total :)), we still had the the beer brewery to go to. This in fact was a German brewery, as a non-beer drinker I was adviced to sample the lightest beer. Surprise, surprise, I liked it. This one, like with the wines I preferred, had a fruity and soft taste to it as well.

Most of the breweries also had other products, beside wine, available for tasting. At one brewery we had delicious nougat. At the other marvelous olives and cheese. At brewery we had some bratwurst, very German indeed :D.

Last stop was a marvelous chocolate factory, where there was –again– plenty of delicious stuff to taste. But this time no alchohol! Yummy yummy in my tummy ;). Couldn’t resist and bought myself the smallest piece of chocolate. Hope it doesn’t melt in Alice Springs!

After the feast of drinking and eating, and seeing some lovely sights of the Swan Valley (it finally stopped raining!), guide Andrew dropped us safey off at Perth. I decided that, since I had drank and eaten that much, that I really needed a good workout at the gym :D. There I went again on the treadmill.

Tomorrow morning I will get up early to say goodbye to Perth through a nice run.

A shuttle bus will then bring me to the airport. From there I will fly to Alice Springs, where the weather is about 30 degrees (10 hours of sun a day!). I will write another blog about my flight from Perth to Alice Springs. And then I will be silent for three days, since I am going on a three day tour to Uluru-King’s Canyon-Olga’s.

A final thought about the hostel I am staying at in Perth, the Perth City YHA. Massive hostel, so no real atmosphere. But everything is well-maintained and clean. The dorm rooms and the bathrooms are big, which is nice. I am very happy that, after a lot of thought, picked this particular hostel in Perth.