Engagement Party

You can always tell its been a good night, when this is the before:

And this is the After................................

It was a great night and I want to thank everyone for coming, given how much alcohol was drank I'm confident everyone woke up a little dehydrated. Although everyone has our gratitude equally, a few people deserve a special mention:

Natacha - For the World's best Home made card
John, Aine and Mark - For wonderful speeches
Orla - For saying yes

I thought the restaurant worked out well the food was really good (starters were like Mains) and service was excellent. Then after the Restaurant for a few more in the East Sydney (None were needed !!!) and after that nothing out of the ordinary happened at all......................

All other photos on Orla's Facebook page.

Easter 2010 - Adelaide Surrounds

The first post in a very long time................. We went to the wine regions around Adelaide for the Easter long weekend, McClaren Vale and Barossa are two of the best known in Australia (with the world's oldest Shiraz vines). We flew to Adelaide on Thurs evening and then just a short drive to McClaren Vale and once we found the right turn we stayed in this lovely cottage just off the main street which was a great location, we'd highly recommend it (its called wine and roses).

With a lovely fire going and the knowledge that this may be our only sober time of the holiday I decided to propose, I had planned to over the weekend but seemed like a really good moment and once Orla realised I was serious I'm delighted to write she said yes almost immediately.

After the surprise and excitement of Thursday evening, we got an even bigger shock on Good Friday, that most of the vineyards were closed, doesn't make much sense in Oz as they're not holy joe's. So First off why headed to a beautifl beach, you never think of beaches around a wine region but it was really lovely.

Given our limited choice we only managed to visit 3 vineyards but two of them were really good so no harm done. We had lunch in Leconfield Wines (Richard Hamilton) which was so good we ditched the car and decided we'd walk the remaining 5k back to our cottage. After that we went to the vineyard of the 'black sheep' of the family Hugh Hamilton and even though the wine wasn't as good the setting was excellent, so we sat out and had a bottle overlooking the vines.

On the way to Barossa we visited D'arenberg & Wirra Wirra, both excellent vineyards. We chose to go via the Adelaide Hills which was a pretty scenic but journey full of windy roads. By chance we stopped a vineyard on the side of the road called Kersebrook Hill, which turned out to be a great find (I'd highly recommend it for anyone else). We stopped in a few other places along the way and eventually found our B&B called "Barossa House B&B" (which was central with lovely hosts but nowhere near as comfortable as our McClaren Vale accommodation). Alot of restaurants were booked out for Easter Saturday so we had to settle for faulty towers, that said the food was ok and a very nice member of staff offered us a lift home (after the lock-in), every other staff member was borderline insane.

Next morning we got up and early and cycled round the vines, we probably got to 7-8 cellar doors. Cycling is a great way to get round and the weather was beautiful, we started in Penfolds which is world famous and always produces the best rated Australian wines. After a few tastes we became very amused by random signs!!I tried some meade (fermented honey) which is quiet nice but I wouldn't be able to drink to much of it and Orla even managed to find an engagement ring for $6, which looks real to me. We managed to stay relatively sober and headed for a lovely meal in a fancy restaurant in town (after paying for the world's most overpriced taxi!!).

Our trip back to Adelaide was painless and we would have gone to the Zoo if we could find parking anywhere but after about 30 mins of looking we gave up. We ended up sitting in a lovely pub for the day enjoying the nice weather. Adelaide feels about the same size as Galway although its supposed to have a larger population than Dublin.