Livin’ my best cruisin’ life

 At the Caversham  Wildlife Rescue Center, I got my wish to see and hold a koala!

 Australia is incredible in so many ways! The people are friendly and fun loving, the country is beautiful, the cities are vibrant. The cities are filled with young people who apparently travel to work on skateboards! There’s a young, energetic vibe all around! The animals are exotic-here are some quokkas-rat like marsupials that have smiling faces!

 I will be honest- one of the things I was most anticipating  during this trip was seeing, and interacting  with, the animals of Australia! I went to two rescue sanctuaries to see, feed, and cuddle, some of these animals. In addition, I was lucky enough to see many of them in the wild. The following pictures show a wombat, a Tasmanian Devil, and an echida.

 The beautiful Swan River runs through the city of Perth. Leisurely ferry rides take you along the downtown scenery and out to Millionaire’s Row beyond.

 After a yummy dinner, the four of us walked toward the ocean and stopped in the Reveley Bar for a nightcap. This bar is on second floor, open to the night air, and overlooking the Swan River, which runs through Perth. It seemed as if half the city was celebrating-bars and restaurants were crowded to overflowing and talk and laughter was spilling out on the sidewalks. Not bad for a weekday! The cosmo at the Reveley was not bad either! And the view was quite beautiful. Have a bevy at the revy!

 John and I stayed downtown and joined out friends from the ship Nanchee and Steve for dinner. Peruvian food is one of our favorites, so it was exciting to know that Perth lists this Peruvian restaurant as one of the best in the city!For some reason they thought it was John’s birthday and had a special dessert for him! And I certainly enjoyed my Pisco Sour!

 After getting glammed up in Fremantle, it was on to Perth for a drink at the rooftop bar at the Hilton Doubletree hotel. Here is the beautiful view.

 The port for Perth, Australia is Fremantle. We took an uber into Fremantle to get haircuts. It’s been two months since our last salon visit and we were shaggy! Luckily we chanced to find a busy, but very efficient and professional, shop where we got cuts. Fremantle is a quaint town, with older buildings and Notre Dame Catholic College. There are plenty of coffeeshops, restaurants and bars to keep everyone happy!

 Just a few more pictures of this spectacular place!

 What could be better than drinking wine at ten in the morning? I sure can’t think of anything? We really enjoyed this beautiful winery and its gracious owner who would open any and all of his wines for us to try. We did manage to buy a few bottles!

 If you look closely under the trees, you can see groups of large kangaroos.

 After a brief overnight sail, we arrived at Kangaroo Island. As the name implies, this place is inhabited by thousands of kangaroos. During the day they spend time under the trees and come out at night, along with wallabies and koalas. The scenery here is spectacular! Yesterday in the Barossa the temperature was over 100 degrees-today it was in the low 70s. Quite a change!

 Our final stop had our favorite wines-Jacob’s Creek. Here we tasted four lovely wines which I know we will really enjoy over the next few weeks!

 Our second winery snd lunchtime spot was Lambert Winery. We had delicious food, accompanied by four lovely wines. John and I loved the Chocolatier port and brought some back to sip on the balcony.

 Another bucket list item checked off! John and I spent right hours touring the Barossa Valley-one of the top wine-producing areas of the world. Of course, we had to do some tasting, too and visited three wineries. At the first winery, we tried to talk them into letting us try their hundred year old port-no luck! 

 We arrived here on a beautifully sunny-but hot!-afternoon. I immediately hopped a tour bus for the city, as we docked about 40 minutes from downtown. Adelaide is very impressive-not nearly as large as Sydney-it is the fifth largest city in Australia, with a population of about 1.5 million. Many of the older buildings are sandstone which gives a lovely, quaint feeling to the city. My first stop was the South Australian Museum, where I saw an exhibit of Maori art. Of course, it was then on to the shopping district-I need to help out the local economy, after all!

 Wonderful day! Today was Sunday Superbowl Night for everyone back home. For us, it was Monday morning Superbowl! The ship had the game on a giant screen on the World Stage and we had lovely snacks all day-wings, hot dogs, salsa and chips, empanadas. That was really fun. The best part of the day for me was a trip to the Bonorong Animal Refuge, where I got to fulfill one item on my bucket list-feeding a kangaroo! I also got close up with a Tasmanian Devil, two echidas, and a sleepy wombat!