Strawberry Fields forever

I arrived at work this morning to find an inexplicable pile of avocados on my desk. Also on my desk, a present from our department's middle manager. I brought all of these things home. This brings the Christmas 2010 grand present total to a staggering....THREE. Oh well, at least I have a lot of avocados. Yum.

What HAS HAPPENED? It has been a long time since I last blogged. Oh, Mark's parents came to visit! We had a week up in Port Stephens around 3 hours drive from Sydney on the north coast of New South Wales, a week of perfect weather sandwiched in between days of heavy rain. Lady Luck smiled upon us.

We rented a little flat for the week in Nelson Bay and spent the first couple of days lazing around on the beach at the bottom of the road and buying mangos from the market. Around the third day, we caught the ferry over the bay to Tea Gardens and Hawk's Nest, watched dolphins play in the river and found the beautiful Jimmy's Beach.



We drove for a day to the Hunter Valley and visited some beautiful vineyards - wine tasted at Vinden Estates out in the most perfect courtyard with the most perfect view.



Also visited the well-known Tyrrell's wines and went on a very enjoyable and informative tour of their wine-making facilities.



There were so many big barrels!

A long drive home (and a dead kangaroo :( ) later, we refreshed ourselves with a good nights sleep ready for a hike up to Tomaree Head, which gave amazing views out over the ocean on one side, Shoal Bay on another and over the little ocean beaches of Zenith, Wreck and Box on the third.





One of my favourite things was our visit to see the sand dunes at Stockton Beach. At around 32km long and 1km wide they are one of the largest mobile sand masses in the world and are fascinating, desolate and desertlike, especially considering we visited on a savagely hot day.





It was kind of an odd pilgrimage as I have this fascination with sand dunes and their mythology. In my mind they are just places where everything is very hot and very absurd. I guess I have read too much Kobo Abe. But my goodness I loved that novel.

Weather

The weather has gone crazy. That hail storm actually happened. *shakes head in disbelief* Global warming? I think it's just global bizarre combustion of all sense and reason.

Melbs

My holidays are now complete. I think I went on 3 holidays in 5 weeks, which is rather decadent.

Holiday #2 involved a long weekend in Melbourne. Mark had been there all week, bumbling around at Melbourne Uni being philosophical and drinking coffee and wine and the rest of the time lounging around in a suite in a 4 star hotel. Oh the life of a philosopher.

I arrived on Friday via the aeroplane at around 10pm. Mark came to fetch me from the bus station and we caught the lovely tram up to Fitzroy to drink some wine and eat some late night desserts with some philosophy persons, before returning to the city and undertaking a lengthy slumber in the world's most comfortable bed.

Saturday it rained. And rained. And rained. And rained a bit more. We caught the trambulator to North Melbourne to a lovely cafe called the Auction Rooms and ate a wonderful brunch, accompanied by fresh juices and several coffees, giving us an excuse to sit there for almost 3 hours watching the rain fall outside. Not sure what to do, we ended up just heading back to the hotel and lying around for a bit, before heading back out on the tram back to Fitzroy to be our old friends Sam and Georgina's first ever houseguests in their new Melbourne flat!!! After a long stay working in NZ followed by several months travelling in South East Asia, they decided to move to Australia after visiting us in Sydney back in 2009. They had only been in the flat a few days and only had a mattress, 2 bar stools and an old TV to their names, but they also had a kitchen with wine so we had a bottle and talked about moving to Australia, moving to the UK, travelling.... It made me sad in a way that they are just arrived here and have a whole new life of fun to look forward to, while we are on our way out....I'm also sad that they are now in Australia just as we are leaving, so we won't get to hang out....the next time we see them will be at when they come back for their own wedding in the UK next July!

We walked out in the pouring rain over to the Veggie Bar and had a grand old meal and more and more wine before it was time to head to bed.

Sunday saw a slightly nicer day.



On the tram. Like the last time we went to Melbs, this time again I got so excited by the tram and took about 7386249372847 photos of the tram and us trambulating on it from inside and out. I have also used the word 'trambulating' so much now I think it might become a real word.

We went to Seven Seeds on Sunday for lunch - delicious toasted sandwiches and even more delicious coffee. We headed on down to the National Gallery of Victoria and had a little wander round, then back up to Brunswick Street for shopping and cafes. Sunday night was spent with Malaysian food and cocktails - we went back to Double Happiness, the bar we had been at on our last visit to Melbourne. It was brilliant.



I had a lychee based cocktail. Then we went over to our other favourite, the rooftop bar at Cookie and drank Kir Royale whilst gazing over the bright lights of Melbourne's CBD.

Monday we checked out of the hotel and went to the National Library of Victoria to print out boarding passes for the flight home. It's a pretty impressive place inside, all domed roofs and old books.

We were thinking about going up the Eureka Tower to the Skydeck on the 88th floor, the highest viewing platform in the Southern Hemisphere, but weren't sure as it was pretty expensive and the weather was still a bit grey. In the end though, we thought we'd go down there and have a look.



We decided to go up and it was so worth it! Seeing the city from so high up is really great. I didn't realise the sea was so close either, I thought Melbourne was inland, but you could see St Kilda and the coast really close by. It's also a lot higher than the Sydney tower so you get more of a sense of looking down rather than just out. Mark was clinging to the walls at first but he soon got used to it!



That's the view over the CBD.

From there we headed back to the hotel to collect our bags and make our way to the airport, where I proceeded to go mad for 2 hours as I had finished my Agatha Christie the day before (it was too exciting) and had literally nothing to do, until Mark went and bought me a newspaper to make me quieten down. Haha.