Early start today ????

Get up with a coffee and shower before popping down to the lobby where they have a hotel restaurant, called Mamacita

Dave treats Daisy to breakfast in our hotel: eggs benny and berry and salted caramel waffles ????

We scoff this quick as we are expecting a collection shortly; waiting outside a few minutes before being picked up on our jazzy bus and off to the Barossa Valley

Our tour guide, Bayden, is a well-versed Adelaide-an and gives us the run down on key facts about the place:

• Victoria Square is geographical centre of Adelaide and Light Square is important as it’s the burial place of Colonel William Light – founder of Adelaide – which only legally buried body in Adelaide CBD

• Hindley Street, and the alleys off it, is the hotspot of restaurants and bars and clubs
• King William Street is the central road or Adelaide – it was meant to be called Main Street but the King wanted it as his namesake: he passed a law making it illegal for another street to cross through another, including this one, it so each side of the road has a different name
• Adelaide is Aus’ first non-convict settlement being designed as a 1 mile square before they arrived (which is why so much of it makes sense – e.g. they can do a U turn with a bus, unlike most other cities)
• Morphett Street Bridge, near the convention centre, is one of the only legal places in Adelaide to allow graffiti
• Adelaide Oval only has 3 grandstands as 1 side has lots of old trees they couldn’t remove
• Royal Adelaide Hospital is the second most expensive hospital in the world and most expensive building in Australia, costing $2.5 billion
• St Peter’s Cathedral modelled after Notre Dam
• As well as the 5 parks within the city, Adelaide is surrounded by 1,000 acres of parkland
• Adelaide Fringe one of the biggest festivals in Australia – 1 million tickets sold and Adelaide only has a 1.5 million population
• Adelaide/SA is the only place in Australia where you can legally drive whilst drinking alcohol – as long as you are under the legal limit of 0.5 mmol
• Maslins beach is Australia’s first nudest beach, until 2007 hosted the Nude Olympics – it’s popularity was its downfall as the Director of the legitimate Olympics caught wind of it and forced a shut down… they now host the Nude Games instead ????
• All states have nude beaches, except Canberra which has a nudest river
• Barossa Valley has South Australia’s first nudest colony in Cockatoo Valley

After about an hour in the car, we arrive at the first stop on the tour: Barossa Dam and Reservoir

We get out and, as we’re running a little late, our guide runs across the dam to the otherside – there’s an acoustic effect where you can hear exactly what someone is saying 144m away as clear as day!

It’s given the name also of Whispering Wall because of this, completely accidental, phenomenon and is the biggest outdoor version of it’s kind

The dam took 7 years to build, being finished in 1903, and was the tallest dam in Australia, at the time; the engineers who built Hoover Dam used this one to better their knowledge for making that one

Back in the bus, the facts continue:

• In 1894, Adelaide became the second place to give women the vote as well as the first place for a woman to run for parliament
• They were also the first place in world to decriminalise homosexuality too in addition to voting in am aboriginal person into parliament
• It was the first place to decriminalise marijuana to reduce numbers in prison as they were going bankrupt – prison costs a lot and the exposure of it made people aggressive and subjected to harder drugs
• This kicked off an explosion of people moving here to grow all the weed and helped pay off the debt (they’d accrued from loss of residents from the world wars) in 10 years
• The law surrounding this drug started off allowing 10 plants per house; now it’s only 1 as 10 was insane
• Used to be the state of Central Australia but cost on lives of getting from the South to the North, that we now call the Northern Territory (NT), was too dear so they gave NT back to the federal government which is how NT still is today (not a state itself, just a territory, similsr to Canberra)
• Called the “City of Churches” because it was founded as a free religious settlement which is why it has a lot of churches as well as the first/oldest Mosque and Temples
• Adelaide is the driest city in the driest state (SA) in the driest continent in the world: only 20 inch rain a year
• The city’s water is supplied from Adelaide Hills
• The lack of water makes it hard to grow enough trees to make for building materials so they build more with stone
• Early Adelaide was settled by 2,000 English families and 3,500 Prussian (now part of Germany/Poland) so had lots of German influence which can be seen with lots of little German towns still
• During the world wars, they renamed a lot of things away from the German names, e.g. Williamstown was Williamsburg before

We arrive at the next stop, of Chateau Yaldara

It’s on the edge of entering into the Barossa Valley and leaving the Adelaide Hills – best of both worlds getting light/medium bodied wines

A medium-sized winery with a gorgeous building and they won the best sparkling wines in Australia 2 years ago

Walked through a tasting, by Susan, sampling 5 different wines – one of these is the infamous 2017 Sparkling Petit Verdot (a sparkling red wine!)

We’re then invited to nose around the building’s back rooms including storage and awards

We set off for the next stop so get shot more info:

• Vines were originally planted North to South to minimise sun exposure; a mistake as wind is blocked so no pollination and stagnant air pockets ending up with diseased vines – now vineyards always plant East to West
• Sun is the next issue as it’s so intensive so destroys them: this has resorted to red grapes being the majority here, which can handle it better with a thick skin
• Watering lowers the quality of the grapes, so they avoid it as much as possible
• Barossa Valley has 47 different soil profiles, so a lot of different techniques to manage the grape vines

We’re driven through a little town called Tanunda, meaning “watering hole” in aboriginee, where we have a little free time

They have a Fruchoc shop, which is popular around here – literally fruits covered in chocolate – so we pop in to get a free sample

Grab a coffee each, from Barossa Beans and Cream, before passing the Apex Bakery – apparently the wood fire oven here has been lit ongoingly 99 years!

We’re picked up again and head straight to Saltram’s

This is a prolific brand for wine in Australia being most commonly known for their most famous sub-brand, Pepperjacks

We get a speedy tasting of 5 wines before getting sat down for a charcuterie board-style lunch

At the table we get a sparkling red, similar to earlier, as well as a “tawny” (which is a port-like liqueur but cannot be called that as it’s not from Porto)

We’re loaded into the van again to Mengler Hill/Sculpture Park Lookout

Final stop on the tour is the third vineyard

Rozenvale in the heart of the Valley and has been a family-owned business since 1858

Mainly a farming family but a recent generation wanted to explore wines with their products so kicked off this craft wine making

They still work majorly with farming (90%) but now share 10% of their efforts into the vineyard

We’re walked through a tasting with Ryan, the general manager, who goes into great detail about 10 wines we try – he even explains about the vines bringing one out to show

We both like the first wine we try, a Semillion sparkling wine they call the “princess of Rossa Valley” – we get a bottle and they give us one for free with it being Daisy’s birthday!

In the car for 1.5 hours before getting dropped at the hotel again – in need of a shower stat as we’ve both been affected by hay fever being out in all the fields

We get ready and head out again as it’s getting to around dinner time

We find The Elephant English Pub and have a little cocktail each

A classic margarita and a mojito

Time for some food – not feeling anything fancy so go somewhere we’d saved by previously passing

Harry’s Bar offers a $14 schnitty and a $20 burger and beer so that sorts us

Chill as the sun goes down and stroll back to the hotel to unwind with some telly before calling it a day