Photos from Tasmania Trip

We loved our trip to Tassie. We flew into Launceston, where we went to the Trowunna Wildlife Park, did a Tamar Valley wine tour, etc.

Then we drove to Hobart, stopping along the way at Nant Distillery in Bothwell for a tour and whiskey tasting. In Hobart, we went to the Museum of Old and New Art (MONA), had dinner at Garagistes, went on a Gourmania Food Tour, went to Bonorong Wildlife Sanctuary, and toured the Cascade Brewery.

It was a pretty great time, mostly just food, wine, art and animals! We got a pat a Tassie devil, and got to hold a wombat joey, which made me very happy! :)

A very happy Amanda - holding a wombat joey

Nant Distillery in Bothwell

MONA

Matthew giving food and scratches at Bonorong Wildlife Sanctuary

Here's the album with our photos from the trip, and a couple of videos. 

Tasmania Trip

Trip to Tokyo

Matthew and I went to Tokyo again -- business trip for him, holiday for me. As with our first trip in 2010, we had an excellent time! Our photos from the trip are below.

Tokyo Oct-Nov 2012

Home-brewing with Ben

After many citizen requests, the White House recently released their Honey Ale and Honey Porter recipes. We went over to our friend Ben's house last weekend to help/watch him make a batch of the Honey Porter. We followed the recipe closely, except we used Australian honey, instead of honey from the White House bee hive. I forgot my camera, so please excuse the mobile phone pics...

Pouring in the grains

The beer is fermenting at Ben's house, and won't be ready until around Christmas. At first I thought to myself, "Christmas, great time for porter!" because, even after two years, my brain still initally thinks of Christmas as wintertime, instead of summer! Anyway, we're looking forward to tasting it -- I'm sure it will be great regardless of the season.

Here's the album with all the pics.

Brewing Beer with Ben

Winter Beer Dinner at The Union

About a week and a half ago, we went to a winter beer dinner at the Union Hotel. The Union is third generation family-owned, and has decided to get into craft beers on tap, to the extent that I think they no longer have VB (Victoria Bitter, sort of the Aussie Budweiser) on tap. Here was the menu:

1. Stone & Wood Jasper Ale (NSW)

2. Mountain Goat Coffee IPA (VIC) with braised ox tail and pigs trotter fritter

3. Holgate Gruit Expectations (VIC) with South Australia ocean mullet

4. Murray's Dark Knight Porter (NSW) with braised beef cheeks and spaetzle

5. Little Creatures (WA) Day of the Long Shadow with spiced apple and pear strudel
6. Young Henry's (NSW) Black en More with coffee chocolate short bread

The food in general was good but not great - the beers were the best overall thing about the evening. My memory might be a little hazy (ahem), but I think my two favourites were Stone & Wood Jasper Ale and the Murray's Dark Knight Porter (on its own, without food).

alm + beer + mtw's glasses

Towards the end

I hesitate to ever complain about being served too generously, but in the end, it was too much beer, and we pushed half-full glasses away! Anyway, it was a fun night.

Les Bières Belges

"All Belgian Beers" by Hilde Deweer - I didn't know about this book during our trip!

I heard there are 500+ different beers brewed in Belgium. Not sure if that's correct, but we tried to taste as many as possible during our time in Belgium!

I attempted to keep a running list of all I tried, but I'm sure it's incomplete. But, here's the list below. These are only the ones I had a glass/bottle of myself, so does not include sips I tasted of someone else's:

St. Feuillien Cuvée de Noël, Hoegaarden Rosé, St. Bernardus Christmas Ale, Floris Witbier, St. Helene, Pere Noël, Christmas Leroy, Tripel Karmeliet, McChouffe, Westvleteren XII, Cantillon Gueuze (spontaneous fermentation lambic), Cantillon Rosé de Gambrinus (framboise lambic), Westmalle Tripel, Waterloo 8 Double Dark (brune), St. Berbardus Tripel, Gordons Christmas, Grimbergen Brune, Garre, Dupont Saison, Chouffe N'Ice, Adelardus Tripel, Witkap Pater, Delerium Tremens.

Phew! That's a lot of research. And finally, since I sometimes enjoy the same humour as 12-year-old boys, I will share a final picture. This is the description of Tripel Karmeliet from the huge notebook of beers at the Delerium Tremens bar:

Hello from Dublin!

As you may know already, we're in Dublin!

Sláinte! from the Gravity Bar atop the Guinness Storehouse in Dublin.

We're here for a work trip for M, then we head to Brussels to spend Christmas and New Years with our friends Kate and Stéphane.

Winter may not be the ideal time to travel to Ireland, but we've really enjoyed it so far. In fact, we've been pretty lucky, and the weather really hasn't been too bad. 

This past weekend, we rented a car and drove from Dublin to the Cliffs of Moher, and then stayed overnight in Galway. The Cliffs were amazing. The wind gusts were crazy - I almost got blown over and had to go over to the side of the path and hold on to the wall! Driving through the Irish countryside was beautiful, and I'm so glad we got to see it, even if it was a short road trip. 

We're here in Dublin a few more days, then on to Brussels! Looking forward to relaxing with good friends, eating frites and chocolate, and drinking Belgian beer!

We're sad to be so far away from the rest of our friends and our family on Christmas, but we'll be thinking of you! xoxo

Melbourne Trip

Matthew and I went to Melbourne August 7-11, and had a great time! We went to the Queen Victoria Market, the State Library of Victoria (where we saw Ned Kelly's armour), walked down Brunswick Street in Fitzroy, thoroughly enjoyed the Healesville Sanctuary (where we paid a little extra and got to pat a dingo), had some wine in the Yarra Valley, and went to the "Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharohs" exhibit at the Melbourne Museum. We also visited Cook's Cottage, the Old Treasury Building and both locations of the National Gallery Victoria.

Finally, we had lots of good food and drink. Our favourites were Movida Aqui and Cumulus Inc., and the coffee at Sensory Lab. However, there are so many more places we want to try on our next visit.

Here are our pictures from the trip:

Melbourne Trip

The State of Australian Beer

What a small, twisted world. I was reading about some Aussie breweries, and learned the "Big Two" here are Fosters and a Japanese-controlled company called Lion Nathan, which I'd never heard of. (Kirin Holdings owns LN.) LN owns: Tooheys, Hahn, James Squire, Boag's, etc. They also own several Australian and NZ wineries, and one in the USA: Argyle Winery in dear ole Dundee, Oregon. Wacky.

Also, Little Creatures, which I thought was independent, is actually owned by Little World Beverages, which is about 40% owned by...Lion Nathan. (Although, Little World director Howard Cearns characterizes Little Word as "fiercely independent," saying Lion Nathan's stake is a "passive investment.")

Finally, last month SABMiller put in a $10 billion takeover bid for Fosters. Apparently some of the smaller Aussie brewers want it to go through, because if it did, they would be some of the last Aussie-owned breweries left. The Australian reports, "A successful foreign purchase of Foster's would leave South Australia's family-owned Coopers -- with just 3.6 per cent of the domestic beer market -- as Australia's leading brewer."

Sources:
http://www.perthnow.com.au/business/wa-company-news/boutique-brewers-raise-glass-to-takeover-talk/story-e6frg2s3-1226080417937
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/bn-fosters-bid-from-sabmiller-leaves-bitter-taste/story-e6frg8zx-1226079564027
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_World_Beverages
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lion_Nathan

A Long Walk with Stops for Cheese and Beer

On Tuesday, Matthew and I went on a long walk, about 5 to 6 miles. We started at our apartment, walked up to Pyrmont and walked through the Sydney Fish Markets, which is fun, even if just having a browse. In addition to lots of fish (both raw and prepared), there is a florist and a nice deli there, too. We were tempted, but didn't buy anything, since we were walking and wouldn't be home for a while.

From there, we walked over to Harris Street to the gourmet shop Simon Johnson. We bought some Valrhona chocolate and some cheese -- Roy Des Vallees, a semi-hard sheep and goat's milk French cheese from the Pyrenees. Simon Johnson has a lot of delicious looking items, but it's quite expensive. Also, they really only had dry goods, a coffee bar and the cheese room. For some reason, I thought they would also have a deli/charcuterie, but they didn't.

Then, we walked over to the CBD, to the David Jones Foodhall, where we bought some bread, fruit and some ham, and continued on to the Royal Botanic Garden, where we ate our picnic lunch. Here's Diana, atop a cool water fountain in the Garden.

Afterwards, we strolled over to The Rocks, had a pint at The Lord Nelson Brewery, and then caught the train home. What a lovely, leisurely afternoon.

Finally, we passed by this new mural someone painted on the side of a house near our train station.

Visitors!

This past week, two different groups of friends of friends were visiting Sydney, and we got to meet up with some cool people: Megan, and Dannalea & Jason. I'm still a bit unsure of myself has a tour guide since we haven't lived here quite that long, but I hope everyone still had fun! :)

Here are some not-so-great cell phone photos with Dannalea and Jason, while we were passing time at Lowenbrau. We were waiting for our table at Sake Restaurant, which turned out to be very good food, although we had to wait a while for a table, even on a Sunday night.

Watching the Cricket and an Urban Bushwalk to South Head

Last Sunday, we went with our friends Lindsay and Grant to a cricket match at Sydney Uni. It was a two-day match versus Bankstown, but we only went for part of the second day. Grant used to play cricket, so he tried to explain to us Yanks. Matthew seemed to pick it up, but I was still quite confused. "LBW, he's out for a duck!" Say what now?

Despite the confusing lingo, it was still enjoyable, especially with the good Belgian beers we'd brought with us. Our favourite of the arvo (favorite of the afternoon) was La Fin Du Monde. Okay, that one's technically from Québec, but it's Belgian-style.


Then, on Monday we went on an urban bushwalk along Sydney Harbour with our friend Mark. We started off at Vaucluse House, walked along to Parsley Bay Reserve (which looks like it has nice snorkeling), and then on to Watsons Bay, where we stopped for lunch. From there, we walked north to Camp Cove, which is said to be the first landing place of Governor Philip in Port Jackson in 1788.


We walked along the foreshore trail up to Hornby Lighthouse and the lightkeepers' cottages. There are also several gun emplacements up there, leftover from the military defense of Sydney Harbour.

Looking out at the Tasman Sea from South Head, Sydney Harbour

[edit by mtw] Here's what our route looked like on the walk (blue line) and the ferry ride back (red line): The ferry route was plotted with the My Tracks Android app.

View Vaucluse House to South Head in a larger map

Finally, we walked back to Watsons Bay, and caught the ferry back to Circular Quay, then went to Mark and Jennifer's for a BBQ dinner. What a great day!

Biking at Centennial Park

Yesterday we rode our bikes to Centennial Park, a huge (189 hectares/467 acres) park in Sydney. We biked the Grand Drive loop, which is 3.8 km. It was very pretty - some parts of the ride are in the full sun, but other parts of the road have trees on both sides that grow together in a shady canopy covering the road, which is really nice. We stopped at the pond to check out the huge black swans; some had come up on the grass to look for food.

It's a really pretty park, and it was a fun ride; I'm glad we made our way over there. I'm looking forward to this year's Moonlight Cinema starting up, where they screen movies outdoors at Centennial Park.

Afterwards, we stopped at The Local Taphouse in Darlinghurst, and had some good beer, the Bridge Road Brewers Galaxy IPA (Victoria, Australia) and the BrewDog 5 A.M. Saint amber ale (Scotland). 

They have 20 beers on tap, and a good selection of bottled beers, too. There were empty bottles decorating their picture rail, and we spotted at least two Rogue bottles from Oregon. The friendly bartender asked us where we're from, and when we said Portland, Oregon, he said, "Oh Oregon, Beervana!"

Note on pricing, just because I'm still getting used to how expensive beer is here (even domestic): the half-pints were $6.50 and $7.50 each; if we'd wanted pints, they would have been $11.60 and $13.30 each!