Heat waves, haunted prisons, and a wine tour

This week has been HOT. On Wednesday it reached 42 Celcius--yep, 108 F. And for those first days I was without a fan, so I headed to the library where there is air conditioning. Classes may have been slightly boring this week, but they too are air conditioned and were a welcome relief from this weather. Normally by nighttime is has cooled off considerably and sleeping isn't a problem, but this week it never really got below about 85 F during the night. My way of getting through the night? Trying to convince myself that my bed isn't actually my bed, but that I'm lying on Lake Mendota, in all its frozen glory. Thank god the weather is finally cooling down and by the end of this week is should be in the low 90's. I never thought I would get so excited for it to be 90 degrees, and to think that that is cool.

Friday night we took a tour of the Fremantle prison, which is supposedly haunted. I mean, it is haunted and we saw tons of orbs and ghosts everywhere. We did the torchlight tour, aka flashlight tour, in the evening so the only light source for the most of the tour was our flashlights.

Fremantle prison by night

I think it would have been a lot scarier if it wasn't so darn hot. A lot of the rooms we went into were so small that the group had to cram in and things got really hot really fast. I found myself thinking more about how hot I was than how I was in a prison at night with only flashlights to guide the way. It was still interesting to hear some of the facts about the prison-I think it was only shut down a few decades ago and some of the stories the woman told us were pretty interesting. She also told us a lot about the ghosts she's seen over the years and all of the paranormal activity at the prison. We walked through the children's ward I think, through suicide row, the isolation rooms, the whipping post, and the tour ended in the morgue.

But enough with the spooky stuff and on to the wine tour! Saturday we took a wine and beer tour through Margaret River. This area is pretty well known in Australia for producing some great wines, and we started off the tour at the Sandalford Winery.

vineyards at Sandalford

It was hard to judge how good of a vineyard this place was as I had nothing to compare it to, but the end of the trip a lot of us agreed that this was one of the better vineyards we went to. We sampled all sorts of white and red wines here and had a chance to just wander around the veranda area. It is definitely a gorgeous part of the country and I think we all enjoyed the views throughout the trip.

So onto Lancaster we went, which was the next winery on the tour. I think this was my favorite vineyard in terms of overall views and the overall vibe. Instead of heading into a main building area with a gift shop, restaurant, and tasting verandas this winery just had one bar outside and with plenty of room to spread, enjoy the wine, and take in more of the views. We all fell in love with the sign they had at one end of the bar...

I'm getting there....

I'm not a huge wine fan, but some of the wines we tasted today were actually pretty good (see Mom, there is hope for me yet!). But even when we got to some of the wines I didn't like as much, I couldn't complain.

vineyards at Lancaster

We were able to actually head into the vineyard at this winery and look around. But not for long as the sun was out and it is still hot! So quick trips into the vineyard, and then back to the cover of the veranda for some more wine tasting.

We had another winery to stop at, but not before a quick trip to the chocolate shop right across the street from Lancaster.

yes. yes. and yes.

All 40 of us bombarded the store and grabbed as many free samples as we could. With hands full of milk, dark, and white chocolates chips we headed back on the bus and off to Edgecombe, our last winery of the trip.

Edgecombe was pretty much like all the other vineyards-we were taken onto a veranda and given more wines to sample. And once again I wandered off into the vines...

grapes at Edgecombe

Another beautiful vineyard in a beautiful part of Australia.

After three wineries, I was ready to change things up a bit and head to the breweries. We went Elmar's first, but it was nothing great. We were just handed samples of beer and weren't even told which ones we were drinking. But we were inside, with air conditioning(!), and it was a great chance to take a break from the wines and cool down a bit.

We then headed over to Mash-more of a restaurant than a brewery, and seemed pretty popular for a late afternoon meal and drink.

remnants of a successful meal

I wish I could say that that was a photo of our table after we left, but I'm just going to pretend to anyways. We stayed here for about an hour, giving us ample time to try their beers (and know what we were tasting this time) and get some of their delicious fries!

This time next week I'll be on my first of three non-teaching weeks. I'm doing the north-west trip, a trip organized through Murdoch University and offered to international students. We'll be driving up the west coast to Ningaloo Reef, and then heading east into the Outback! And I've just finalized most of the details for my trip to New Zealand during the second non-teaching week of the semester. I've already been here three weeks (how did that happen??) and have done so much, but I have so much more to do!

Really jealous of the wine tour? See more photos here!