My 2014 Adventure: Travels to Singapore, Australia & New Zealand: Last Days in Melbourne

Sorry for my lateness, I've been so busy these last few days! Although I'm safely in New Zealand now, I'll give you an update on my last few days in Melbourne. During the day Friday I went to the south side of Melbourne to see St Kilda Beach. It's a beautiful area of town with a theme park (Luna Park), a theater, botanical garden, and esplanade. Friday night Nikki and I took a train home to her parents' house in Surrey Hills. They have a beautiful home! We had a delicious dinner of salmon, potatoes, peas, and lima beans. Her younger sister, Izzy, made a tart for dessert out of vanilla bean paste and figs. We stayed the night and then set out for a tour of the Mornington Peninsula and Montalto Vineyards. They had a cafe with brick oven pizzas. Izzy and I shared a zucchini pizza and a lamb sausage/brie pizza. We also tasted some of their wines and olive oils (my favorite was the oil infused with basil).

Later that night we drove back to the city to experience White Night, the second annual all-night arts festival in Melbourne. There were synchronized swimmers in the public bath house, light shows projected onto buildings, bands playing in the streets, bars/restaurants/shops open all night long (the festival was from 7pm Saturday to 7am Sunday). I loved that we just walked around the city all night, and around each corner was something new. For instance, we happened to come upon some opera singers in a cubby of the Royal Arcade singing "Tonight" from West Side story. However, by the time 2am came around Nikki and I were exhausted so we went home.

On Sunday we again went with Nikki's mom and sister, Izzy, on another road trip to a winery. This time to Domain Chandon in the Yarra Valley. Their main champagne house is in France, with sparkling wine production locations around the world in Argentina, California, and Australia. You can only call it champagne if it comes from Champagne, France. We had a picnic lunch in the grass in the sunshine and it was perfection. The tour of the facilities was fascinating because the traditional method of champagne making is very labor intensive. After the wine is fermented in large tanks, it is put through a secondary fermentation in the bottle. Post-fermentation, the bottles go through "riddling" where quarter turns every day on riddling racks allow the yeast to fall to the neck of the bottle. The necks are frozen and the yeast pellet is "disgorged." Due to the loss of wine in disgorging, a dosage is added (wine plus sugar) to make up for the lost volume. Dry sparkling wines will not have a dosage added. We did a tasting afterward, and were lucky enough to try a 2004 sparkling wine that tasted of delicious biscuits.

Then it was time to head home and pack for the next leg of my adventure. Now that I'm in New Zealand, I'm staying with my good friend Mariel, who was a roommate of mine when I studied abroad in Dublin. We are planning a trip for the next two weeks around New Zealand before my harvest job starts on March 17th.