hunter valley and life lately

1,2,3 Views at the beautiful Hunter Valley 4,5 entree and main course at Cracked Pepper Restaurant, Hunter Valley, 6 Pho from Gia Hoi, Haymarket Sydney on a windy day 7 Little blue box from my boy

I went to the Hunter Valley in early July with my boy to see the winter festival thingies in the Hunter Valley Gardens. This is actually my second time ever.. my last one was on around the same time last year. We came fully expecting a beautiful ice rink by the lake and a big snow man but we left dissapointed as the rink turns out to be really small and the snow man is not even made from real ice.  One thing that makes our visit to the Hunter Valley Gardens better was the chocolate festival, which is running at the day we were there along with the winter festival.  Hunter Valley is beautiful as usual although the vines are still dry and the vineyards basically looks like lines and lines of dead branches. I should really make my way here again in summer.. vineyards when it is green and in its full glory should be prettier compared when they're all dead and brown in winter. We ate some really good food as well there - pictured above the stuff from Cracked Pepper restaurant in De Illius Winery. Food there is fabulous, those bread and dips thingies are to die for.

Sydney was so colddddddd last weekend especially because of the damn 100km/h wind thats been going on since friday. I managed to get my ass moving and went to the gym for a run on saturday though. I started on my running again with the help of the C25k app... it feels great to be running again despite all the pain related to cardio. Sunday was cold as well but I went to the city to have lunch the the boy.. we had pho in Gia Hoi which my vietnamese friend have recommended. It was great! Pho is possibly my favourite noodle soup ever... it probably surpasses my love to japanese ramen noodles.

Anyway I did get a year older in July and getting closer to mid life crisis.. I'm already having a terrible itchy feet syndrome now and I'm just so, so, so, desperate to GTFO my normal everyday life and just lay around like a slob on a nice beach somewhere (well for this I have booked my self, the boy, and my girl and her man a long weekend getaway in Gold Coast in September holiday). The boy gave me a little blue box with a white gold skinny band ring on it which he said is an upgrade from my old silver ring from him last year. No diamonds but I love it regardless. At this rate I'm expecting that he does another upgrade next year hopefully with real diamonds muhaha... (hear hear, mr liz)

Anyway hope you all have a good week - now lets go back to the all dreaded working-monday-day! :(

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