Last Friday I went to a party in the apartment block above the Coke sign in King's Cross, which was a novelty! It was a philosopher friend of Mark's who is from USA and is just visiting Sydney to work there for a month.
Went to see The Flaming Lips on Tuesday night at Hordern Pavillion. Best gig EVER! Came out feeling so revitalised and joyful, they let tons of balloons out into the crowd to play with, Do You Realise?? sounded so good!!
Went to Ice and Slice in Newtown with Katherine on Thursday for some good old pizza (slice) and gelato (ice). I also managed to impressively get home from Newtown to Meadowbank in just 45 minutes. Mark didn't believe me, but you can just do it if you pay attention and time the stupidly infrequent trains right! Friday night I was planning to be good and come home to tidy but ended up in the pub with Becky, Richeal, Cian and Karl. Foolish. And while I was podging up on beer and potato wedges Mark was in the gym so I felt doubly guilty and must try to live a healthier life. Friday was also my last day of work - I have 4 and a half weeks off!!!! SPRING BREAK!!!
And now I am here on the blog and STILL not sorting the house out ! :(
I never wrote about Melbourne properly...
I arrived on the Thursday, on a surprisingly on-time Jetstar flight to Avalon and caught the bus into Melbourne, arriving at Southern Cross station. From there, I walked all the way up to the university, trundling my case, because I did not understand how to buy a tram ticket at that stage. This later turned out to be a good thing because it gave me a good idea of where stuff was, while most of the people who had been around for the conference for over a week already didn't have a clue!
Once there, we went to the last conference talk of the day which was Matt Kennedy (one of Mark's old Nottingham colleagues) and then went for some drinks in a pub with a few people in tow. Then pizza, then we decided to investigate some bars, the first being the rooftop bar at Cookie! It was so good! We went back again on our last night to say goodbye, which is when these photos were taken.
It was very busy and had heaters and amazing views and was playing some awesome Boards of Canada-type electronica out of speakers on a post which suited the view so well. Would be great in summer!
After that we went to a cocktail bar which may or may not have been called Double Happiness. It was so good in there, with a proper cocktail waiter who could make you custom cocktails if you just told him what you wanted it to taste like. It also had an open fire which was so nice to get all cosy by. Quite a few people from the conference ended up joining us so it was very jolly. Ended up spending a shocking amount of money but hey ho, and walked back to the uni (we were staying in a college room there) to discover oh dear it was 4.30am.
BUT still four hours later we were up again for Kit Fine's talk at 9am on Friday morning. I have no idea what it was about but it was nice to see. I drank a lot of coke and then we headed back to bed for a bit. Mark then went off to the conference farewell lunch and I dozed some more in the room before meeting him on Brunswick Street for juice, then getting the tram to Greg Restall's house to which we had been invited for dinner, which was lovely.
On Saturday we had a big scrambled egg brunch and a gallon of coffee followed by a look round the shops, including this amazing stationary shop that I am going to order a ton of stuff from (we couldn't buy stuff there as we couldn't get it home on the plane!).
In the evening we went to the Vegie Bar and had a vegie roast! With a really nice bottle of some wine called 'Tempranillo', which I'd not heard of but is a spanish grape or something. Mark made me put my fangs in to laugh at me.
Then we went to a bar called the Carlton where there were all these big taxidermy animals (giraffe and ostrich etc) for some gin, then back to the rooftop bar for more more more wine!
We love the tram! Mark also managed to maintain his new quiff all week, which is quite impressive because normally when he gets quiffed he lets it drop after about 2 days.
On Sunday we had most of the day until our flights so we went to the Dali exhibition at the National Gallery of Victoria. It was an amazing exhibition, they had so much stuff there, including full length screenings of Un chien andalou. It was also really well laid out and the little information bits were written really well, obviously curated by Dali experts rather than just general curators who sometimes seem to miss the point of everything. It is also nice to see some big name art in Australia, because it does seem like they miss out a little in general, although that's perhaps just my European perspective.
Then after some food we headed for our planes, Mark to Tullamarine and me back to Avalon, but fortunately our flights arrived at Sydney at the same time at the other end at about 10pm Sunday night and we pootled off home to bed.
I want to go back to Melbourne :( But I must stop procrastinating and TIDY UP. I have the sorest throat in the world, I can barely swallow and it's been like that for two days. I must also therefore get healthy. The cricket also appears to have been rained off, I wonder if there will be any at all today.
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