the adventures of pinkaholic girl

a rainy melbourne day

We arrived in Melbourne last night, via Virgin Blue. It was the smoothest flight I've had in a while, and the sky was very clear, so we had a perfect view of Sydney by night as we flew south. I could see the M5, Stoney Creek Rd and Forest Rd, but I think we actually flew directly over Alfords Point, so I couldn't see my old suburb :( However, I spotted Canberra and the giant roundabout that goes around Parliament house, so that was quite exciting. From the sky, you can see that Canberra is indeed very well planned (as they say - whoever 'they' are).

The flight was quite novel - the planes are very new and have leather seats! The emergency procedure cards also had some detailed instructions on how to open the doors and operate the life rafts. You have to tie them to a seat to deploy them, which seems rather complicated in the middle of a full scale emergency. ("Wait! don't run from the flames yet! I have to secure the life raft, it'll just take a minute!").

And to tie in with their funky young image, the hostesses put little jokes in their regular spiels, like:

"This is a non smoking flight. Anyone caught smoking will be asked to step outside."

"Dimming of the cabin lights is standard procedure for night flights, and enhances the appearances of your flight attendants."

I was amused (but then again, I think I'm quite easily amused).

The flight was ahead of schedule despite leaving late, so by the time we got our hire car it was only 10:45. It turns out that since I'm under 25, and despite the fact that I have a GOLD licence, I can't drive the hire car without paying an extra $27 per day. No way in hell were we going to pay another $100+, so Cameron decided he'd do all the driving, which suits me just fine.

We'd agreed to meet his cousin Victor for supper somewhere, but got a little lost on the way. Cam had brought his GPS unit along which kept insisting we were about 200m northeast of where we actually were, so the directions were totally wrong. Sigh. We aborted the plan to meet Victor at his house, and ended up going to the supper inn in Chinatown instead. After google searching it, it appears it's an institution. The restaurant was tucked away on the first floor down a side alley in Chinatown, and there was a line outside at 11:45pm at night! Pretty impressive. It does some good congee, not as good as superbowl, but still very tasty. Victor is a funny guy. He's also a geek - must run in Cam's family - but very cool. He alleges that Melbourne people dress trendier, and offered up his jeans-and-sandals look as proof. (He may have been joking on that point).

We got to Cam's aunt's place so late that they were asleep and none of the kids were home. However, this morning when I woke up at 9, Cam's other cousins Les and Helena were awake, and I got a proper look at the house we're staying at. It's lovely, with exposed brick walls inside, with several split levels, and a very high ceilinged lounge that has huge windows facing the mountain ranges. Gorgeous. :) And a beautiful thing to wake up to on your first day on holiday.

They took us all out to pho in Springwood for breakfast. Unfortunately, I was allergic to something - possibly MSG - and got itchy :p sigh. I thought allergies were supposed to go away as you grew up...

Anyway. Cameron had bought a snowboard on eBay a few weeks ago and wanted to pick it up from the owner, so we trekked out to Eltham. The board has a huge scratch in the back, which I guess was sustained when the single male owner smacked into a tree and broke his arm. It looked quite nasty but can probably be filled in when we get back to Sydney. Cam also stopped by his old neighbourhood and took photos of his house and street. By the time we finished with that it was 1pm, too late to really go to Mornington Peninsula, so we went for a drive around Mt Dandenong. I remember having done this when I came with my parents a few years ago, but the view was decidedly less exciting than I remember. Most of Melbourne is fairly flat and you can't see many mountains in the distance, so you're just looking at urban areas that stretch to the sea. It's fairly uninspiring. However, we salvaged the visit by taking some funny photos at the garden by the lookout which I'll put online later.

There are a lot of little towns along the Mt Dandenong Tourist Drive; we stopped at Olinda to have a look around. They have TWO old fashioned candy shops, inviting cafes with many delicious looking desserts, lots of antiqueries (one was selling a very realistic petrol bowser replica with an illumated plastic sheep on top of it, tagged with "for the guy who has everything!"), and the famed Olinda pie shop which has won FIVE gold medals at australian championships for its meat pies. Natrually we had to try one, even though we were already extremely stuffed from all the free food that Cam's aunt keeps pushing onto us. The place was packed with a waiting line for seats at 3:30 in the afternoon and had a lot of funky old wood furniture and those old style advertisements for Aeroplane Jelly, Coke and Pears Soap lining the walls. I'm a little bit ashamed at how easily I was swayed by the kitchy decorations, but I guess if I opened my own tourist restaurant, I'd know how to decorate it.

It started to rain as we headed back to Melbourne, so we just headed home - not that anything would be open, anyway. It suited me to veg out by the large window overlooking the mountains while it rained!

Tonight we'll be eating dinner with Cam's aunt, uncle, his cousin Victor and wife Prue. I heard talk of poker afterwards, so I don't think we'll be short on activities to do :)

posted by d @ 8:55 am