The good things

It's amazing how quickly you start taking things for granted. Since being home for just over a fortnight I pretty much expect the weather to be clear, sunny and warm every day, and so far it hasn't let me down. At the risk of being Captain Obvious there are a lot of differences between Adelaide and London, and you have to take the good with the bad. Since I've been gone the cost of living over here has exploded, so much so that at current exchange rates London is cheaper than Adelaide for just about everything except for accommodation, that was unexpected. Getting stuff like a mobile phone, or home broadband is confusing and expensive here too, and websites like Amazon don't even exist! Also, there's spiders everywhere.

But the flipside is pretty compelling, and I've been trying to focus on that. The aforementioned perfect weather is a good place to start, but that's the tip of the iceberg, some world class wineries are an hour's drive away (Barossa Valley & McClaren Vale), and the Adelaide Hills wineries are closer still. The beach is 25 minutes away and is free and usable 24 hours a day (it stays pretty warm here at night, I was a guest at a wedding last week and the temperature was still 37 degrees at 10pm). Tennis courts are plentiful and free also, I managed to give Danny a 6-2 lesson the other week for the record, and obviously being surrounded by family and friends has also been amazing, although I am looking forward to moving into my own place next month. Quite a lot actually.

Here's a few shots from last week's trip to the Barossa, I headed down with my cousin Scott and his special lady Sierra, it was by no means an actual photo shoot, but when people are this good looking you just have to take their photo between tastings!











This morning I headed down to the beach with my good friends Andy and Kez (if you recall my Barbados blog these were the guys I was staying with) and their 4 month of German Short Haired Pointer named Herman (Herman the German). You're allowed to walk your dog without a leash before 10am so they decided to give Herman a bit of freedom to mingle with other dogs. Absolute pandemonium. Imagine a 6 year old with attention deficit disorder who's spent the last 3 hours drinking red cordial and eating chocolate - then multiply it by about 50. It was super tough to get any photos at all that were in focus, it was basically impossible to predict where he was going next, and there were about a million other dogs all try to get in on the action, but I did manage to take these before I put the camera away and just enjoyed the walk.













(Kez LOVES cleaning so much she was thrilled Herman left her something to clean while she was out of the house. Almost as much fun as cleaning tiles before regrouting)