The Emerald City

I love the this photo, which is another one from our Melbourne trip. We were on the way back from St Kilda and all of a sudden, Mum and I noticed this guy on a horse with this gorgeous 'hippie' girl in a flowing white poncho, standing there petting it (do you pet horses? sorry, never been a horse gal!). I quickly grabbed her camera, which switches on faster than mine, and snapped this shot just at the last minute. How great to see something like this right in the middle of a busy suburb!

Well, we obviously made it back from Melbourne in one piece! I managed to watch two movies on the way over (Monsters vs. Aliens and some Dragonball Z thing) and despite the shuttle we booked not bothering to actually show at the airport to pick us up (read my review on trip advisor here for all the gory details), we got to the hotel with no other hassles. Unfortunately thanks to the shuttle bus incident, I didn't get into town on time to make it to Rathdowne Remnants (sniff, sniff!) but it was a gorgeous day so we headed down to St Kilda instead and spent the afternoon there, cruising around Luna Park and sitting on the beach until the wind got too cold.

We were going to get a caramel slice or eclair at one of the famous cake shops, but decided to try something totally different and each bought Baklava for afternoon tea. Golly but that is one weird tasting sweetie treat! Unfortunately I don't think either of us will be trying that one again, too intense and sweet tasting for us :) We had a great time at Wicked on Saturday night, I think Mum really enjoyed it, at least I hope she did and it was great seeing all the horses and carts in the street afterwards.

The next day we went to breakfast at this great little diner around the corner from our hotel (where I took the beautiful photo of mum in the post below) and then spent a couple of hours at the markets. After the markets, we headed out to Bridge Road and looked around for a while, got some great deals at the Bendon outlet shop and I found the best pair of jeans I've ever bought and a few tops, then back into town and to DFO where we spent the rest of the day shopping. We had to buy two extra suitcases to bring our goodies back in! After blobbing out for an hour, we had dinner at the restaurant downstairs from our hotel then just went upstairs and crashed. for the first time in weeks I was asleep in seconds and slept through until dawn, apart from a short wake-up when a bus load of tourists arrived from the airport at the backpackers across the road.

Of course, the shuttle company messed up our return trip too, but I'd allowed 2 hours to get to the airport, so even though they were an hour late, we still got there on time! The check in process was hilarious - Mum took a couple of travel sickness tablets which she normally never does, and if you've never taken them before they can make you a bit loopy! She was bumping her way around the airport like one of those toys that turns around when it hits something and then just keeps going in the other direction... I couldn't keep a straight face at the departure check point and we even had the lady stamping our passports laughing! I watched The Boat That Rocked on the way home which was fantastic, awesome music, awesome cast and a great upbeat storyline. It has three of my favourite actors (Bill Nighy, Nick Frost, Chris O'Dowd) and one of my favourite comedians (Rhys Darby) and so I sat there through the whole movie tapping my feet to the tunes and laughing my head off. Mum watched it on the way over, but her ears were quite blocked so she didn't managed to catch it all (though she was also boogie-ing in her seat!) but I got a copy of the DVD for my birthday, so we're going to watch it again next weekend on the big screen with surround sound.

I have to admit, I still don't love Melbourne itself, but I adore the public transport system (though the trams could use some tidying up and surely there's got to be a limit to the number of people you can fit on one!) and the shopping there. I think we'd have to spend more than 2 or 3 days like I have done to take it all in. I plan on spending a whole day next time looking at the amazing architecture and taking hundreds of photos of the beautiful terraced houses and Victorian buildings. I asked mum what her favourite part was, and she agreed the convenience of the trams is wonderful - and she loves riding them like I do :)

I had a really quiet birthday because I was just too shattered to do much, then took Mum and Dad to Soto on Thursday night for Mum's birthday. We arrived early and had the whole place to ourselves for over half an hour! The food was gorgeous and even Dad had a good time... My friend Nick and I have a photo restoration challenge going and by good luck, he gave me some of the photos he'd been working on on Wednesday. One he did of mum as a child was just stunning and I decided to buy a frame for it and give it to her for her birthday. I grabbed some orange ribbon too, and wrapped up the Emmeline pattern and fabric in the orange poplin, and gave her this. I felt bad for not having much else to give her, but the dinner more than made up for it. I totally recommend you go to Soto if you're ever in Auckland, the food is amazing and the staff are super friendly.

Since then, I've been working on getting rid of this headache which has been hanging around for a few days now and slowly working my way through restoring some of Nick's photos! I've finally got two done (after a month of promising), though I've yet to colour them like he did to mine. I think he's going to be really pleased with them once they're all done though. I also finished the first book in the Sookie Stackhouse series. It wasn't so great, but I'm strangely compelled to get the next one and keep reading! I'm going to trawl the second hand book stores next weekend to see if I can find them cheaper - $29 is just too much for something I can read in a night and now True Blood is out here, the price of the books on TM has gone through the roof.