We had an early start to the day so we could walk to the Pullman Hotel in Sydney to pick up our Europcar rental for our drive to the Hunter Valley. It was weird picking the car up from a luxury hotel lobby, but Europcar had a kiosk there. I picked the cheapest, tiniest car to save some money and the rental guy tried for far to annoyingly long to upgrade our car to a Mercedes for an extra $30 a day. He finally gave us the keys and we headed down 7 levels UNDER ground to our car park. The hotel was 30 stories and 7 of those went below ground – so crazy to think about the engineering that goes into such a structure!
We drove the car around and around and around the 7 floors back up to street level and took off on our journey. One of my uncles and his wife live in an Crate & Barrel magazine worthy house about half way to the Hunter, and they invited us over for coffee and lunch. We had a blast catching up with them, playing with their dogs, and getting a quick tour of their gardens that grow almost everything! The list we got was passion fruit, pumpkins, asparagus, bananas, apples, limes, macadamia nuts, and they even have chickens for fresh eggs! I am so jealous they could grow so many fruits and veggies on their property.
They also treated us to a delicious lunch with the most amazing view of the ocean. I had some lamb and mint tacos and Ryan had the southwestern ones. The tacos were much bigger than expected and we were stuffed!
We had a great time talking about Iron Man races (my uncle has run several!), working out, our family, and our many travels. My uncle and aunt are also avid travelers – the apple didn’t fall far from the tree! Time flew and, before we knew it, we had to take off for our 1.5 hour drive to the Hunter Valley.
The drive was windy and scenic. We were surprised that the speed limits were so slow on the highways – most of it was only 80 KPH (50 MPH) with max speeds of 110 KPH (68 MPH). My lead foot was not impressed!
We finally arrived around 3:30 and I was so happy that we chose to stay at the Kirkton Hotel. It was so charming! It was an older but totally remodeled complex and our room, again, looked like something from a Z Gallery magazine. We had a stunning view as well.
We had a quick change raced over to Tempus Two Cellar for some wine tasting. My family and I went to Tempus Two when I was young and my mom must have shipped 20 bottles of their dessert wine to us in the USA. Since then, every holiday dinner was celebrated with a small glass of it for everyone, including my sister and I when we were like 12. The wine brings back so many good memories of happy holiday times I had to go and get more.
We sampled a variety of wines and didn’t taste one we didn’t like. When we got to the dessert wine, Ryan totally and finally understood “the hype” and we bought two bottles, one for us and one to share with my parents when we got home (maybe…..).
Tempus Two closed at 5 PM and there was a Thai / Japanese restaurant in the same complex next store that was recommended for dinner. It opened at 5:30 so we decided to enjoy a bottle of wine on the patio until then. We were looking for kangaroos since they were supposed to come out at dusk, but only saw magpies and cars. The wine was great and it was very relaxing.
At 5:30, the restaurant opened and we walked over to find out that their grill was broken and only 1/3 of their menu was available. Both Ryan and I had our heart set on Pad Thai so we Googled the closest Thai place and went their instead. Ryan got the Pad Thai and I had some super tasty Panang curry!
After dinner, we went back to the hotel and decided to explore a bit. The hotel had a heated indoor pool and hot tub. It smelled too heavily of chlorine so we opted skipped that. We also heard that there was a barn with two week old piglets on the property but it was too dark to find them so we ended up going back to the room and promptly fell asleep.
The Impatient Traveler 
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