Keith Dallara

Postscript

I'm home in NYC now, and these travel stories would be incomplete if I left out probably the most significant event of the trip. On our last night in Sydney, Thanh and I invited my parents and Thanh's mother to dinner at one of Sydney's finest restaurants (Aria) which is located in my precious Toaster building, just up the pier from the Sydney Opera House. Before dinner we took a short walk over to the Opera House, and there in front of our combined parents, I proposed to Thanh. To the shock of all in attendance, she accepted.

My folks and Thanh's mother were quite surprised, which pleased Thanh and I quite a bit. We had a lovely dinner together, but struggled to keep my Mother from telling every passing stranger what had just happened. Needless to say, all the parents were pleased.

For those of you who've asked for pictures, either of us or the ring, I'm afraid there aren't any good ones yet. I'll add another post later if we come up with some. For those of you who've sent congratulations (or "it's about time") messages, we appreciate it. Finally, for those of you who've asked where or when the wedding will be, we don't know yet, but we hope to figure it out soon.

Thanks again to everyone who's read along about our trip. We had a great time and couldn't be more excited about how it ended.

Rain Forest Crunch

Juvenile Saltwater Croc, originally uploaded by Dallara.

I've updated some pictures that Thanh took on our trip out to the reef. Most of her shots are through a glass bottom boat, so they're not as crisp as underwater shots, but there are some nice ones in there. You can see the small selection of Port Douglas shots that I've uploaded so far here. There will be many more, but I only had time to upload a few today.

During the day today we took a Rainforest tour. It was a group of just six people, Mom, Dad, Thanh, and I, plus two strangers who were nice enough, but pretty quiet the whole time. Our guide, Paul, was very knowledgeable about the rain forest, the plant life, and the animals we encountered. Thanh, of course, took tons of photos. As I mentioned before, only a few for now, but there are lots more to come later.

Tomorrow morning we fly back to Sydney, and then Friday morning Thanh and I head back to the US. Port Douglas has been great, and we've been extremely lucky to be here during the we season and experience sunny skies every day.

Diving the Barrier Reef

It's been a little harder to find time to post since we got to Port Douglas. Not as much downtime as in Sydney.

Anyway, yesterday Thanh, Mom, Dad, and I took a trip out to the Barrier Reef with Quicksilver Tours. They have a floating pontoon out at the reef (about 1.5 hours by boat from Port Douglas) and from there you can dive, snorkel, or ride in the semi-submersible vehicle. I did a dive and then later snorkeled with Thanh, while the others rode the semi-submersible and saw some of the reef from the Pontoon. I wasn't crazy over this dive company, it's really overpriced for diving, but for a way for non-divers to experience the reef, it's a great option.

Today I went out on my own to do three dives with Calypso Tours. It was advertised as the smallest dive groups, and indeed my group was only five divers. However, the whole boat was about 35 people, including another dive group and a bunch of snorkelers. The dives were excellent, but the dive experience (meaning on the boat) is not quite what I've gotten used to. Still, on my three dives I saw a turtle, two sharks (reef and whale tip reef), and a huge variety of fish and reef critters whose names I'll have to look up later.

More, and hopefully some pictures, later.

Port Douglas

We arrived at Port Douglas today (we being Thanh, me, mom and Dad).
Mostly spent the day getting to know the town, swimming in the pool, etc.
Tomorrow we take a long boat ride out to see the Great Barrier Reef. I'll be diving while the others will be mostly viewing it from a semi-submersible ship. Mom might get in and snorkel a bit too, we'll see.

Expect some nice pics after our trip tomorrow.

Picking up the folks

DSC_0258.JPG, originally uploaded by Dallara.

Yesterday, my parents arrived in Sydney, and Thanh and I picked them up as they departed their cruise ship. They're traveling with their friends Doug and Barb, who they know from back in Downingown. Barb has a condition that limits her to short amounts of time on her feet, so Doug pushes her most places in a wheelchair. They seem remarkably mobile, given this setup, and they managed to keep up with the rest of us quite well all day.

We hit a few of the regular tourist spots with them, including a quick look at the Opera House and sending them on a Harbor cruise. That evening, we met up for dinner at the restaurant Waterfront. The food there I thought was quite good, almost everyone had the Barramundi which is a local Australian fish. After dinner, we walked over to the Syndey Theatre Company, to watch a production of a play called Troupers. The play was a bit hard for us Americans to follow at first. Set in the years immediately after WWI, there was a lot of slang, and the Aussies talk funny to begin with. By the second act, I think everyone had got the hang of it, and enjoyed seeing the show.

This morning, we met my folks and Doug and Barb for brunch at Bondi beach. Then we did a bit of the walk between Bondi and Bronte beaches, but the heat and sun kept us from doing the whole 4K walk. The pictures below are of Bondi, and as usual there are a few more in our Flickr photos. Thanh took some great looking shots of Bondi with her Digital SLR. You can see them here

Tonight Thanh's mother is cooking everyone dinner, then off to Queensland in the morning.

Barossa Valley

CIMG1301.JPG, originally uploaded by Dallara.

Here's us making off with a small portion of our stash from Two Hands Winery.

Thanh and I rented a car early Wed morning and drove the 50KM up to the Barossa Valley. While we were there, we managed to do wine tastings at four wineries and get in a nice lunch. Four wineries in one day is pretty much the limit we can do, based on Thanh's low tolerance, and the need for one of us to drive the car back home.

Here's a rundown of the places we hit and the wines we got. We look forward to sharing them with everyone when we're back in NY.

Two Hands
First place we stopped, a little shop with a very talkative wine steward. Seriously, this first stop took over an hour, and most of the time was her yapping away. Still, we loved the Brilliant Disguise which was a lightly carbonated white wine, and the Aerope which was a 100% Grenache which is a bit unusual, but fruity and delicious. Thanh is on a bit of a Grenache kick (I didn't even know what that was before this trip) so we tried all Grenache wines at a few stops.

Torbreck
Torbreck is Thanh's favorite Barossa Valley winary, and it didn't disappoint.
We picked up a case of the 2005 Steading which is a 100% Shiraz. We also loved the Les Amis which was another 100% Granache, possibly even better than the Aerope we bought. Unfortunately, the Les Amis was sold out, but we were told we may be able to find some in the US though, so we'll be on the lookout. Their top of the line Shiraz, called RunRig was outstanding, but at $225/bottle in the winery, seemed a bit expensive.

Kabinye
After our first two tastings, we needed to take a break from the wine, so we went to the Kabinye Cafe for some lunch. Thanh tried to persuade me to get the Roo, but I couldn't believe it would really taste well. I ended up with the Chicken, which probably tastes just like Roo anyway. We weren't crazy about the wines here, their most notable wine was a Rose, which neither of us were too impressed with. We did however like the Hubert Shiraz and the Frontignac dessert wine. We ended up with one bottle of each.

Charles Melton
This was our last stop, and it was frankly a little disappointing. I think the wines we had here were all too similar for us to really tell apart. Possibly we had had too much wine at that point to tell them apart. They were all Shiraz or Shiraz/Grenache blends. We ended up buying one bottle of the Charles Melton Shiraz, which was quite good, but not noticeably better than the other wines they served us.

After filling ourselves, we made one more stop in Barossa at the whispering wall. It's a huge damn with acoustics setup so that you can whisper at one end and the sound will be carried all the way to the other side. There are a few pictures of this over in my Flickr photos.