I woke up way earlier than my alarm and started googling how to drive with trams in Melbourne - stressed much??? None the wiser and several failed games of Candy Crush and a Kindle chapter later I pulled on my running gear and took another leisurely walk-jog-walk-jog-walk along the vineyards in the drizzle to see balloons rising in the mist and to be rewarded by my first laughing Kookaburra of the trip - now it feels like I'm back people! Managed a whole 16 minutes jog and a whole mile it was to boot. Must have been a sight for the balloonists with my little rotund frame bouncing along in bright pink beside the vines and the gum trees - well worth an early wake up and several hundred dollars - what d'ya reckon??
After a 4.5km plod, it was shower and breakfast before checking out. Today's special offering - gluten free crepes - I gave them a miss and stuck with the Full English (doesn't really go with the running Lycra I know!), but Adrian said they were pretty tasty. We settled up the bill and then Andrew (that's what the girl had written his name down as) and I went for a massage in the Spa before the nightmare drive to Melbourne. The massage was awesome, felt my back clunk into place several times and was nice to work on some of the permanent knots in my shoulders that work has kindly provided. My legs also appreciated the pummelling after my little morning jaunt.
The drive to Melbourne was relatively painless and except for some traffic light confusion about whether the car or the pedestrian had the right of way (clearly the arsehat who honks his horn the loudest has priority), we emerged remarkably unscathed. We made it to Flinders Lane and found the hotel. I pulled into the entrance to the parking garage and then began the overthinking - what if it's the wrong place, I go in to check at reception and someone else pulls in behind and I'm stuck, he's stuck, oh woe is me - cut to general wailing and gnashing of teeth stage left ..... so I reversed out parked the car a little way down the lane, ran in and indeed it was the right place. Now however the car is too far down a one way street. So, I think to myself, turn right-right-right-right please and we'll be back in the game again, only you can't always turn right (don't get me started on the idea of the hook lane turn left to turn right fiasco) and google poor man Sean on my mobile keeps yelling "go back to the route" because he can't update quickly enough (Please Explain as Pauline Hanson would say - the lilting Irishman who narrates the driving life of the ladies in my family on TomTom is called Sean - the distinctly non calming Posh English voice on Google Maps simply is not Sean). We could now segway nicely into a mini rant about why 4G in cities seems way slower than the middle of the countryside but I shall resist the urge. To cut a long detour short we did, after a little less straightforward manoeuvring end where we began in the pull in to the Parking garage and unloaded and checked in with little fuss and bother to our next palatial abode.
After settling in I decided to take a walk to the nearest Internet cafe, several blocks later and no sign of said establishment and legs informing me that not jogging since September and now subjecting them to two days jogging in a row needs punishment. Resisting the urge to just walk into a store and buying an Australian map loaded Garmin out of spite, I then tried to find the library which is on the sam u road as the hotel - having made the call to walk toward rather than away from t he hotel and a couple of repeated blocks later, I found the awesome book-lending emporium hidden behind a cool-trendy automatic door-coffee shop morphed hallway and after being reassured that I could use their computers without the usual Catch-22 of having to join the library but needing to be a Victorian (State which Melbourne is in rather than needed to time-travel back to an earlier, simpler pre TomTom era) to do so, I jumped on a aching merrily but slowly downloaded the TomTom software to be rewarded on its conclusion by an invitation to now input my Administrators password..... Hey folks proud of Me or what? I got up and left with no shouting or swearing of any description!
Slightly deflated I bought a late snack at a Bakers Delight (think Australian Greggs but with decent Boulangerie style wares) and some extortionately priced drinks in a 7Eleven and headed back to find Adrian in the lobby reading the paper and surfing the free wifi. A few sneaky What's App ping later and our dinner date was set with my Melbourne Besties Jay and Kim.
After a quick change and a bit of slap to hide the enormous black abs under my eyes we walked/rolled less than 200m round the block to Mahu to be greeted by a flight of stairs. As we were early I nipped down and found Jay had called ahead and the lovely staff had cleared the way for us to use the service elevator. The restaurant was magnificent, Middle Eastern inspired with a variety of tasting menu options and a drinks list to rival the Nobody Inn in Devon. We plumped for a Kiwi beer called Tuatara, which like it's namesake had a lizard like texture to the bottle neck with a subtle spine up it, Adrian persuaded me that carting the empty around in my luggage for the next 5 weeks wasn't practical. The beer tasted good too, by the by. Jay soon arrived with the kids (you know it's been too long since you caught up with your mates when they create a whole human being you never met before and he's now seven and the little toddler you had fun playing ball with in the garden is now almost finished a primary school). We tucked into a round of Warm Turkish bread with spicy fried beef topped hummous to keep the kids from getting hangry whilst we waited for poor Kim to finish her over-running C-section list.
We opted for the 4 course tasting menu for 5 with gourmet style fish and chips for Oliver but were thoroughly and shamefully defeated by the banquet that followed. The food was to die for but what started as a six man ravenous-devouring machine by course four rapidly became a trio determined not to return more the half the plates back full. Sadly no photos were taken except me proudly displaying my Taj Mahal style Turkish coffee (mixed cultural metaphors I know but it's a part of the world I've yet to visit). The instruction that came with the coffee were - drink it until you hit mud which whilst cryptic was SO accurate! Dish of the night had to be the lamb followed closely by the white chocolate and lime mousse, topped with gin granita and a coconut ice cream. Ollie slept pretty quickly and with little fuss on Jays lap after his chips before being transferred to the booth next door when our fellow diners departed and when a wide-eyed Chrissie started cuddling up to Mum and looking thoroughly worn out after a late night trick or treating yesterday, Jay took the kids home whilst an equally exhausted Kim chatted on and caught up after a long and hard day at work. I'm abundantly blessed with gorgeous friends who I barely see but each time I do it feels like home. After being pretty much the last diners left we said our goodbyes with a hope to catch up again, clinics and surgeries permitting, before we Fly to NZ on Friday. Back to the city pad and soon to bed for us two entrepid travellers.
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