Perth

19-25 January 2011

We arrived in Scarborough at around 4pm on Wednesday and headed down to the beach for a look and a beer while Yan & Amanda were still at work. Walking back, we see a office worker walking down the hill to the shops, which was actually Amanda! (She thought we were backpackers...). We spent the evening catching up; Jane, Jim & Hamond also came around and we had a few beers.

Thursday we caught up on washing, Internet and headed into town in the afternoon for some shopping. Kitty stayed in town with Amanda to continue shopping while Yan and Lawrie went down to the beach for his first swim in the Indian ocean in four years.


Hamond really missed Japanese curry (Hanichi, Brisbane - a uni staple) so we decided to put on a Japanese feast one night we were in Perth. Friday was spent hunting around Northbridge with Hamond looking for ingredients and eating chinese food. We ended up in Subiaco to get the final ingredients, with dinner planned for Saturday night. We all hit the town that night for Hamonds (belated) birthday, which consisted of a massive chinese feast, beers and Karaoke - this was a very big night!

Our Japanese feast included; Karaage, Okonomiyaki (chicken), Sushi (vege), Curry (vege + crumbed chicken) along with some Asahi to wash it down. Our friends Matt and Jel also made it, having just got back from their honeymoon! (Interestingly, the subject of honeymoon was raised a number of times over our stay. On the first night Jim was explaining that the father of the bride in ye olde days would bring the couple mead every night for the first month of their marriage (mead=honey, month=moon) and Lawrie pulled out the bottle of mead...)

I think "Look Normal"was the instruction for this photo

The Feast

 Sunday we piled into Jane and Amanda's cars and headed off to the Swan Valley, starting the day with some coffee tastings at Yahava. We took home a bag of their black gold coffee, which lasted us to Walpole.

Yahava coffee - definitely required

Our first Winery was Lancasters, where we sampled the menu, cheeses and ended up with a few bottles of their white.

Jane getting ready for another tasting.

CHEESE!

Lawrie in the Wine Connoisseur pose

Grapes getting closer to harvest.

The group at Lancasters

We then went to the chocolate factory for some tastings, before heading to our lunch stop at Janebrook Winery. They had pretty decent tapas plates so we ordered and had our wine tastings while we waited for lunch to be prepared.

Tastings at Janebrook

Matt, Lawrie, Amanda & Yan at Janebrook

After Janebrook we cruised to Great Northern Distillery, where tastes were $3 made into your favourite cocktail! 

Car Crew...

Our final stop was Feral Brewery, Lawrie had been here previously & wanted to try the beers again. We were slightly disappointed in the Feral White, which had been a much loved favourite.

With our tasting racks.

Yan testing a blending option...

Matt and Jel invited us all around for dinner that night, a yummy risotto. Lawrie went for a swim with Yan & Matt before dinner and the boys all had to walk back without a towel, shoes or boardies.

Amanda loves photos...

...really loves photos

Monday was spent recovering from a big few days. Lawrie dropped Silver off for a service and the 8km home in the wind and rain, half way back the handle bars came loose which slowed the rest of the journey down. From reports this was not a great day to be working either! That night we headed to Brass Monkey to catch up with Flo & Oli, guys who we met while we were in the Blue Mountains. They had to change their plans due to the flooding so headed West a bit ahead of us and were continuing up across the top, but Oli had a tight time frame to stick to, hopefully the cyclone didn't stop him!

Oli, Flo, Kitty & Lawrie @ Brass Monkey

Tuesday was spent relaxing and chilling out & recovering. It's very nice to have a base like home to just relax and do nothing! We drove to Mosman Park to catch up with Camille, who showed us around Freemantle by foot. We started out at Little Creatures near the water, very windy but a pretty sweet spot with some very expensive boats. Attempting to find a decent vegetarian feed proved difficult as we tried around four places before returning to Little Creatures and settling on a selection from their Tapas Menu.