Margaret River

Our next mini break was to the world renowned Margaret River, famous for the excellent wines the region produces. We rented a car and managed to squeeze all of our bags in, just about. The drive down was entertaining with our sound track consisting solely of musical theatre and cheesy pop music we could sing along to. Every traffic light we stopped at got us some strange looks from the other drivers who could probably hear us through their cars! We booked an adorable wood cabin that had room for 12 people, with just the 5 of us in it we were living the dream! The first evening we had a look around the town and had dinner in a brilliant pub with a really friendly atmosphere. We then had a few bottles of wine and an intense game of monopoly in our cabin.... for 23 year olds we really know how to have a wild night!!

We woke up early the next morning with a bit of a hangover but eager to go on the wine tour we had booked. We decided to go all out and booked a tour which included tastings of wine, beer, liqueur, cocktails, cheese and chocolate! We started off with wine and visited 4 vineyards, trying their ranges of whites, reds, sparkling wine and even a sparkling red wine. Then we had a buffet style lunch with meats like kangaroo and crocodile which was really tasty. Feeling a bit tipsy we headed over to the liqueur tasting. The man who owns the distillery and takes the liqueur tasting was hilarious and had a really dry sense of humour. We loved him! I do feel like we wouldn't have found it as funny if we hadn't already drunk so much alcohol! Next we tasted some cheeses, most of which were pretty gross if i'm honest, then the chocolate which was a very popular stop. There was bowls of dark, white and milk chocolate chips to taste and you could just help yourself. We decided it would be a great idea to pour the chocolate into a small plastic bag i had so we could save some for later, it's not stealing if it's free samples right?! The last stop was a brewery where we tried tasting planks of the ales, beers and ciders. They weren't all 'to my palette' as we were told to say if we thought something tasted bad, but some of them were pretty tasty, the pear cider was particularly nice so i bought a pint of that, which was probably a bad idea.

On the bus back to our cabin we tried to get all the other, mostly older, people on the tour to join in singing along and dancing to the music, they weren't overly enthusiastic but they did all pose for a photo of our tour bus group. We had dinner out again and i had a huge steak which sobered me up nicely. We were all pretty tired after such a long day of drinking so we hit the hay pretty early. We had to leave early as Cheryl and I had work that evening and it was a 4 hour drive back to Perth. Needless to say the journey back involved slightly less singing and a lot more napping. It was a great little mini break and i'd definitely recommend a visit to Margaret river to anyone in the Perth area. It's a really beautiful place and the vineyards are really interesting, we learnt so much about how the wine is made and what makes each wine taste as it does.