Day 59 - 11/30/22 - Adelaide, Australia - Day 2
We are really liking these two day port stops on this voyage. It gives a chance to see the area at a little bit more of a reduced pace without the pressure of making an on board time of 4:30 or 5:00pm after having only arrived at 8:00am. Because our next destination of Kangaroo Island is just a short distance away, our onboard time was 10:30pm. But we were onboard well before that.
Our tour was with Taste the Barossa and it was a 10 hour day from pickup time at 9am until drop off at around 6:30pm. JR was our guide and he was full of all sorts of information, trivia, humor, and life vignettes. The 20 passenger van was comfortable with good air conditioning and an audio system that worked. In summary, our tour was a brief city of Adelaide tour, a stop at Mt. Lofty, a drop off in Hahndorf, two wine tastings in the McLaren Vale (Shingleback and Chapel Hill) and a wrap up drive along the beach communities west of Adelaide including Glenelg and Semaphore. I'll not do a blow by blow description of the tour, but just comment on a few things.
Hahndorf is an authentic German town formed in the 1830's by persecuted German Lutheran immigrants. While the town certainly caters to tourists (many tours visit here and there is a direct bus line from Adelaide), many of the buildings are original and they certainly have a northern German feel to them. It's not like Leavenworth, Washington which is a marketing created Bavarian village. The town was very full of tourists on this Wednesday and there was really nice weather. There are all sorts of shops for knick nacks, German items, German food, and the like. We only had 2 hours there and I'm sure my wife who is a former German teacher would have loved to have spent more time there.
The McLaren Vale (sort of short for valley) is known for its Shiraz wine. It is relatively close to the ocean and receives the ocean breezes which transfers into the flavors of the wines. At the first winery (Shingleback) we had a cheese and cracker plate ($25AU upcharge), and that was definitely worth it to help sample the wines. Both of us were impressed with how smooth the Australian wines were compared to the many other wine tastings we have done on the ship over the years. And we learned that much of the production of these two wineries were and are exported to the USA. We will certainly be on the lookout for them. Because Holland America has a $20US corkage fee for any wine bottle brought on board, that would have doubled the price of any wine we might have purchased. So we didn't.
Back on board, I inquired at the Front Desk about converting my New Zealand dollars of Australian dollars. At the current exchange rates, my $65NZ should have been worth about $60AU. But the ship would only give me $45AU plus $3.50US. I'll just wait and exchange it at the airport. What seems to be happening is that HAL converts the currency first from NZ to US dollars and takes a commission. Then it converts from US dollars to AU dollars and takes another commission. I mention this to just be aware for the conversion fees when using the Front Desk or Guest Services on a ship. When I neeed cash, I typically just use an ATM and get a fair conversion rate. My bank refunds the ATM service charge.
The weather today was excellent and it appears that it is going to hold. So we should be able to tender at Kangaroo Island tomorrow starting at 7am. We're aiming to be on the first or an early tender. We're planning to do a bush walk or two from near the port area unless there is a local tour company waiting at the dock with a more interesting option.
I'm writing this at 9:30pm and the all aboard time is 10:30pm. We'll set sail shortly after that.
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