Magic Melbourne

Thursday, 1 August 2013

I'm clearly not making progress with a detailed write-up of my recent girls weekend in Melbourne to help celebrate a friend's 40th. So here are some photos instead..

We stayed at an apartment in docklands. It was pretty cool..

I was hoping to organise a paddle what with the water so close by but unfortunately the only day I could hire a boat it was blowing a gale.

Right outside our building was a rack of Melbourne city bikes. As casual users it only cost us $2.70 per day. They were great fun! Sitting on a 3 speed bike in a very upright position is positively joyous!

The first place we pedalled to was the QVB Markets which I haven't been to since 2006 when I bought some ugg boots on our way to moving to Tasmania. I'm still wearing them now! This time we were more food focussed as we set about getting fresh pasta, bread, dips & cheese for our birthday feast.. It was so fun - and so different to daily Hobart life!

 I did have to hold my nose as we navigated through the meat and fish sections though - ugg!

After our market trip we rewarded ourselves with a trip down to St Kilda, Acland Street to be exact.. no guesses as to why...

 Yum. 

After some free time during which I went to check out my buddy Clare's cool new apartment and my other buddy Jo's new mind studio we reconvened at the docklands apartment and had a relaxing evening with delicious food and fine wine (ok ok - the others had fine wine I had Midori and Lemonade as I have the palette of a 14 year old).

The next morning the others went out running while I watched the Cake Boss on foxtel.  When they got back we packed up, dumped our bags at reception, picked up a city bike and cycled joyously (again!) to highly regarded cafe Seven Seeds in Carlton. It's famous for coffee apparently. For me it's now famous for hot chocolates with a stick of chocolate in them..

I have to say that the food was indifferent  though - my poached eggs on sourdough came on toast that was less than a cm thick, and rock hard to cut - what happened to thick slices?  Also it wasn't a patch on Huon Valley Woodfired Sourdough. 

After the cafe the others headed to Lygon Street for cake but I really didn't deserve any and I was pretty cafe'd out by that point so Clare and I hopped back on the bikes and went back to get Clare's car from Docklands.  When we got there we decided to join Matt, Jo and Jo's nephews at the pretty new ice-rink a short walk away. It was fantastic - two beautiful full size rinks with fantastic freshly groomed ice.  It's been a long time since my ice hockey days in Norway that's for sure but that brought it all back (not the skills unfortunately but the smell of the ice and the feeling of flying). Sooo cool..We're going back for sure next time our family passes through Melbourne!

So that was pretty much it! Melbourne was just fantastic. The shops and markets and cafes were great. The company was awesome. Oh and on Friday night we saw a hilarious movie (The Heat) at the Jam Factory in Toorak that I'd see again tomorrow if I could afford it!  The fact that the cinema was right next to a lindt shop was a happy co-incidence as well!

What a fun adventure that was.  I had my  $200 prize money to spend from the IceBreaker. The weekend was certainly worth all the training (although of course I would have gone anyway - I just would have felt a little more guilty about it!