Oh Sweet Adelaide!

It was definitely time for a girl's trip so my friend Heather and I began the planning, we decided on Adelaide for the shopping, dining and wine country. It began at the business lounge at the Alice Springs airport, you see due to our last minute planning we were forced to fly business - can I hear a collective aaahhhh.  While in the lounge, where they have free alcohol - we poured some wine and decided to get the first "girl's weekend" photo for FB - what we did not realize is that on the table, in the corner of the magazine, there was a headline about being gay - and of course our FB post read - GIRLS WEEKEND BEGINS!, you can imagine the comments!

We arrive in Adelaide a few cocktails later and head off to the Crowne Plaza - we were fortunate enough to have booked our trip during the Fringe Festival (highly recommend) and everything was located within walking distance of our hotel.  We began the evening with a margarita at a pop up Mexican spot.  What is a pop up spot? Why it is a bar that takes over empty buildings, fill them with old furniture, park a food truck out back and serve drinks - only open during the 4 week Fringe festival.  We then ventured to an Italian restaurant for dinner, where apparently Heather thought we were at a table for 6 by the amount of food she ordered - I was in charge of drinks and I cam back to the table with the largest, fullest glasses of wine allowed!  We then headed off to the theater (a pop up theater) to see a female comedian - she was hilarious but one of the best parts was that someone had brought their 14 year old son to a raunchy, female comedian show - in a room with only 25 seats he stood out like a sore thumb, you could tell he threw her off her game

One of the Pants Down performers.

.The next day was a shopping frenzy - I could almost imagine the Australian Gov sending us a personal thank you for stimulating the economy.  We went crazy after the lack of shopping we have had here in the Alice!  We then headed to the main area for the Fringe festival, the Garden of Unearthly Delights - where we had tickets to the Pants Down Circus (sounds more exciting than it was).  We bought a bottle of wine for the show and headed in - it was a lot of acrobats and laughter - great time.  We walked around the Garden for a while, checking out the scene - it would be fun to go this event every year!  Then came a Mexican restaurant for dinner - queso - yes, please - enchiladas - yes, please - rice - yes, please - oh and a pitcher of margaritas!

Whispering Wall

Can you hear me now???

On Sunday we had scheduled a private driver to take us to the Barossa Wine Valley - we started with a trip to the Whispering Wall, where you can stand on either side of the wall, a good 200 feet away,  and hear each others voices.  We then went to get a bird's eye view of the valley before we began the wine tasting.  Our first winery was Kellermeister, and after tasting just about everything they had to offer we had purchased a case of Boots Cider as well as a case of wine.  We then headed to Chateau Tununda for some more tastings, 2 cases later we were on our way to lunch - thank God - food!  We stopped at  Artisans of Barossa , where you have gorgeous views, lunch and wine from 7 vineyards.  Our view pretty much stopped at Simon, one of the vineyard owners - who did the tasting of 12 wines for us personally.  At this point, I think I am a comedian saying brilliant things like "Simon says, drink more wine" and Heather is intently listening to all of his talking points - we bought more wine.  At the last stop, Rockford wines we saw some amazing antique wine barrels and old machinery, oh and then we tasted wine and bought a case!

Kellermeister winery

Barossa Valley

Hanging with Simon.

It is our last night in Adelaide and we decided on Chinese food for dinner - we hop in a cab to Chinatown and begin our search of the perfect place for dinner.  We stop at one place that looks nice and grab a table - we look at the menus, look at each other and quietly get up and leave - not sure what the menu said but it had pictures that looked awful!  We finally decide on a spot - just busy enough to know it is good - but not so busy that we could not get in.  The fact that there were dead animals hanging in the window did not bother me at all at this point, I just sat in the chair facing Heather!  It was actually very good Chinese food.