I’ve had some problems uploading photos to Tumblr, so here’s a link to a Google photos album: https://goo.gl/photos/4PDbupZTjd43yGoX6

Enjoy!

Today was a lovely day. We took “Perth’s Famous Wine Cruise” up the Swan River to the Swan Valley.
The trip up the river took about 2 ¾ hours, during which we not only got to enjoy the views – many open countryside parts interspersed with groups of housing (as well as a newly-built 70,000 seater stadium and a huge casino complex) – but were also introduced to wine tasting. This involved using the five Ss (stem, see, swirl, smell and sip) on four local wine samples.
On arriving at the Sandalford Winery, we were taken on a tour before more wine tasting (three white, two reds and a rosé) before a very pleasant two-course lunch and (unsurprisingly) some more wine tasting (a couple of dessert wines).
The journey back along the winding river was accompanied by free wine (Rob and I were fairly restrained!) and one of the crew singing (and encouraging us to join in) for the last part of the trip.
An absolute highlight was the dolphins swimming alongside us for past of the journey back.
It was a long, but fun day ☺

We transferred to our hotel fairly close to the centre of Perth today and then set off to explore the city. It’s fair to say that we don’t entirely feel we’ve ‘got’ Perth yet.
Don’t get me wrong, it’s a clean, smart, modern city, but it feels a bit soulless. Coffee shops are closed by 3 or 4 and there don’t seem to be a great number of eateries for the more evening crowd.
Our theory is that, with Perth being such a hugely spread out city, people come in specifically for work or shopping and then do their evening socialising in the many suburban centres (or maybe, in some cases, just don’t come in to the city at all).
Positive highlights have been the pleasant (ongoing) developments around Elizabeth Quay, the amount of older architecture still intact (sometimes only a facade) and a huge amount of public art.
A word of appreciation too for the newish bus station, accessed only from above and organised like a train station with ‘platform’ sections for each bus stop. It all seems to work very efficiently (and yes, I know this last but is a bit ‘transport geeky’).

A very quiet day today, just reading on the balcony and visiting the beach. The weather has been cooler and cloudier today (down from 38C yesterday) and we’ve even had a little rain.
Moving hotels to the middle of Perth tomorrow.