Gold Creek: Adore Tea & Canberra Bird Aviary

Today was a lovely sunny day, and we decided to spend it at Gold Creek in Nicholls. The first stop was Canberra Walk in Aviary. We had bought vouchers for $4 entry on Living Social. I must admit that at first I was skeptical that this place would be worth the usual $11 entry fee for adults, but I would highly recommend it and I will definitely return. There is a fantastic range of birds, and they are mostly very tame- climbing on your arm, shoulder etc. It's a real close and personal experience with Aussie wildlife, and would be perfect for any overseas visitors.

A tip: a bowl of apple is included with the entry fee. For $1 extra, you can buy a bowl of live mealworms. Bub loved these and so did the birds (for different reasons of course...LOL). Such a novelty and great fun!

My favourite birdie photos:

Up close and personal

Rainbow Lorikeet chowing down on a live mealworm

I think they were eating bugs off each other, but this is still cute

A grass finch (and now I understand why they're called grass finches!)

 Stunning stunning colours

Hmmm is this camera edible too?

Next stop was Adore Tea, a pretty tea house with a wide range of flavoured teas. I love the outdoor setting (and there's an almost enclosed kids playground that you can see from the tables, which is perfect for keeping little ones entertained), and it has a super cute but overpriced giftshop with a range of teapots and accessories. In terms of the cuisine, we had the hot chocolate (which was disappointing- it just tasted like regular hot choc, whereas I would have expected proper melted Belgian chocolate or something delicious and gourmet) and the Chai vanilla tea (yummy). We also shared the white chocolate mudcake, which was cold from refrigeration, didn't taste fresh and was pretty average. Next time I'll go with the scones!

White choc mudcake, at least it looks delicious!

Some of Adore Tea's cutsey wares

2 cup samplers which I bought for 95c each - they have these for most of their range

Finally, no visit to Gold Creek is complete without checking out the Lolly Shoppe. There is something magical about wall to wall candies, it reminds me of my childhood and all things sweet!