Wine Tasting, Christmas Shopping and Carols in Newcastle


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Oceania » Australia » New South Wales » Newcastle
January 1st 2012
Published: January 1st 2012
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Hi all!

We arrived at Newcastle (one of the oldest cities in Australia) late morning and found our hostel. It was a very grand building and reminded us of Harry Potter. We had a look around the hostel and then took the free shuttle bus to the shop to get some food. The weather was very wet that afternoon; luckily we had a dvd player in our room so watched 'The Hangover'. That evening the weather brightened up and we had read about carols in the park, which was next to our hostel, so we headed out to get in the Christmassy mood. We watched a church band play some modern songs and then we sang a few carols; it was nice but not quite as nice as being dressed in coats and scarves singing carols!

The next day was a complete wash out with heavy rain all day! Thank goodness for the dvd player as we were kept occupied by a few films! We also looked at tours to do in Newcastle and decided to book a wine-tasting tour for the next day. That evening the hostel was offering 'all you can eat pizza' for $7 per person. As we had been stuck in all day we treated ourselves to the deal and Anton was keen to see if it was all he could eat!! The pizza was good and Anton managed 15 slices, which was all he could eat! $7 well spent!

The next day we were up early and waiting outside for our 9am pick-up to take us on the wine-tasting tour. By 9:30am we started to wonder where the bus was, so Anton went into reception to ask. Our luck again...it ended up that the manager asked someone else to book our tour and he did it too late so we weren't actually booked on! Typical! The manager was apologetic and booked us on for the following day. So instead of the wine-tasting tour we went for a walk around the town and then came back to hostel to pack our lunch for the beach, as the weather had got a lot better from the morning. However, when we arrived at the beach, we tried to lay our towels down but the wind was so strong we had to do a quick manouver and literally sit on the towel as one of us held it down! When we were finally sat down, we noticed that our legs were stinging due to the sand being whipped up by the wind!...perhaps the beach wasn't thee best option! We saw a grass verge just above the beach and headed there to get away from the stinging sand and spent the afternoon getting pretty wind-swept!

Up again for wine-tasting and this time we were collected at 9am by a man called Tex along with 10 others and taken to the Hunter Valley (where there are over 120 vinyards). Tex was really funny and made the day really enjoyable. We went to 4 different vinyards throughout the day and tasted a lot of wine, cheese and chutneys - yum! The best vinyard was one called Sobels which was a small, family run business. It was here that we learnt the most about different wines and how to taste them and we even bought a bottle of their white port to give to Rory (who we were staying with for Christmas) for Christmas. We went back to the hostel very merry!

The next day we had planned to visit a place called Port Stephens but once again the weather spoilt our plans! Port Stephens was a beach town, so we decided it wasn't going to be worth seeing it in the rain. I was a bit down about the prospect of another day in, so Anton decided that we would go into town in our raincoats and buy each other a Christmas present. We weren't going to do presents but we decided we would only spend $20 on each other and it would be fun to do...and it was! We got back to our hostel late afternoon and wrapped our presents for each other and then packed up ready for our bus ride to Sydney in the morning.

Lots of Love from Kate and Anton xxxxxxxxx

xxxxxxxxx (T, L, E, G, N, E, M, I and J)


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