TheHillsLife

Now I do understand that it isn’t Saturday, it would be great if it still was, but life got in the way of posting on this yesterday 🙂

During the week I had the idea to make a weekly Saturday feature of one of the many things you can do in the hills…and that is walk…or stroll (hmm wonder what the exact different between a walk and a stroll is?), or run…anyway regardless of how you chose to get around a drive to an Adelaide hills historic town, nature reserve, national park or picturesque village must be followed by a good walk around to take in the sights, sounds and smells of this beautiful part of South Australia.

My locality of choice for my stroll yesterday was a functional decision as it was about time for a nice Saturday bakery lunch, take away in this instance, and one of the yummiest bakeries up in these parts is Ottos, on the main street of Hahndorf.

Hahndorf was an early colonial German village (c.1839) and is the main tourist coach stop of the Adelaide hills. Unfortunately because of this, and I hate to say a bad word against anywhere or anything in this fair region, the place has become (well actually i’d say has been for a little while) a tad kitsch, really just a tad, drawing on all things stereotypically German and with many stores stocked up with Australiana paraphernalia (toy kangaroos, clip on koalas and ‘dunny’ plastic road signs, sigh) but I must stress with this aside the place is lovely and a great destination or stopping point. Many of the gorgeous German colonial buildings remain, some draw on the atypical German medievalesque character of a building to lure shoppers to their abundance of Australiana products (hmmm i’m sure there’s a thesis waiting to be written on this  :-))…

…while other buildings are simply picture perfect, a remnant of a time gone by…

The range of restaurants, cafes and bakeries seems to expand on a monthly basis and the local produce available here, from a variety of stores, is amazing (although I must express my disgust at seeing a Subway now positioned on the main street :-()…

…and the proximity to some of the state’s best wineries is just a small part of the attraction (barrrr yeah small part :-))

Annnyyyyway, before heading to the lovely Ottos I took a short Autumn stroll along the main street, taking some piccies, seeing what’s new in town and grabbing a coffee along the way…

…and by the time I reached Otto’s I was ready for a good mouthful of pie pastry (hmmmm and maybe a vanilla slice ;-))….mmmmm…

Okey dokey well I hope everyone enjoyed the trip to Hahndorf, I hope many of you can experience its joys as well at some point :-)…i’m off to shove a lemon up a chooks bum (that’s code for preparing a roast chicken ;-)).

See you soon

Danielle xo