Day 15 New hat and Barossa valley

We got up rather early in the morning and had breakfast at the hotel. I was kind of less hungry thanks to the marvelous dinner yesterday, but it is always quite nice to have breakfast with a good and varied buffé, which was the case at Stamford Plaza. Mikael and Åsa left early to pick up their rental car at the airport, and Anneli and Markus left right after them. We decided to meet again in Barossa valley. Alice and I went out to be in the shopping mall when the shops opened since she wanted to look for a favorite in The Bodyshop and I wanted to go to Adelaide Hatter go see if I could find me an Australian hat. The hat shop is located in Adelaide Arcade, an old an beautiful shopping arcade and it turned out to be a wonderful hat shop indeed. The staff was really friendly and knowledgeable
and gave me really good advice on which hat to choose. I eventually went for a red Akubra, travelling mode. Akubra is a classical Australian hat brand, the hats are made of feltet rabbit fur, and modelled in a classical, but still decisively Australian style. The traveling model can be folded, or "squeezed together" slightly so it is easier to travel with. The red was maybe not what I thought I would end up with, but I really, really like it and think I will wear it a lot!

Adelaide Arcade

Wonderful Adelaide Hatters

Nice Adelaide building

Artwork in the mall area

My new red Akubra

Pigeon thinking of bath

We then left the hotel and went to Barossa valley. First we checked our airbnb, but since we could not access it until later in the afternoon we called Åsa and checked where they were headed. They were just going to have lunch at a vineyard called David Franz winery so we went there to join them. It was a small, very cosy place where we all had shrimps with avocado for lunch. We also tasted five different wines, or in my case one dry grape and apple cider, two red wines and two sweet dessert wines. I particularly liked the red wine made from mataro grape, a grape I had not heard of until today. It is also called Mourvédre and is apparently of Spanish origin, and was popular in the mid to late 19th century. The bottle was also decorated with musical notation from The Four Seasons (The Spring) by Vivaldi. Couldn't be better, I thought, so I got a bottle of it to take home. We also picked a botrytis semillon called Sticky.

Lunch at David Franz Winery

Lunch view

Grapes

The whole gang tasting wine and enjoying ourselves

After a long lunch we went to our airbnb in Lyndoch. It turned out to be a huge house with four bedrooms and large kitchen/common room. There is a gym in the garage and a spa pool in the backyard. So we had a lazy afternoon in the afternoon and had a BBQ with grilled meat and potato and sweet potato baked in the oven. Of course we drank local wine with that, and we are looking forward to more tastings tomorrow.