Around the bay ‘09
Anywhere but here.
The last thing I wanna be is one of those self-important bloggers who assumes that they need to alert their public to all the mundane reasons they haven’t blogged in a while.
Let it just be said i’ve been busy, in fact right now i’m feeling like ‘09 was a pretty productive year. I may go into some detail in the future.
Around the bay is this Sunday, can’t wait. Photos to follow.
…and I just can’t be bothered.
That annoys me.
Please enjoy some more humour.
See you in two weeks!
Well actually i’m happy to report that I didn’t puke at all this weekend, not once. I did however eat a whole lot. Because my little brother was in town we took on the the task of taking him on a bit of a gastronomical tour of Melbourne. Sounds a little strange and all, considering that he lives in the worlds largest city metropolis. Melbourne is pretty amazing as far as foodie cities go though, even with a fraction of the population of the big cities.
Don’t worry, i’m not about to get all ‘critic’ on you. I’ll save my rating system for another time…
Places we ate and drank:
Yeah, not bad for just a few days.
It was great to have Gabe around, even if I do get a bit emotional sometimes. It’s just that i’m very proud of him and do enjoy hanging out together. He’s my bro!
Guess that means we’ll have to take that trip back to Japan again soon eh?
Gabe, special.
Best get back to packing for our NZ jaunt, off on Thursday morning.
Did I mentioned how freaking excited I am!
16, 45, 150.
What to do on a Sunday eh?
Sleep in? Drink some coffees? Read the paper?
Not today, we were determined to have an adventure.
Firstly we got up reasonably early and drove on down the highway to Geelong (sure are a lot of fast-food places there eh?), we parked the car and jumped on the bikes. We had our sights set on doing the ‘Bellarine Rail Trail‘, a 32km stretch of trail running from South Geelong down to Queenscliff. Strangely enough it follows the historic railway line, the first half of which is no longer there but when you make it down to Drysdale you can jump on an old steam-train and travel at a leisurely pace for the remaining portion of the journey.
After a relaxing train journey we adjourned for a spot of lunch and a couple of coffees before jumping back on the bikes for the return leg. Luckily for us we were blessed with a gusty head-wind for the first 15km which made it tough going indeed! We still were only 5 minutes behind the train though getting back to Drysdale. After a quick rest and and some more snacks we soldiered on with the last part of the ride, I think the thought of being on the finishing stretch gave us both a second burst of energy (that and the distinct lack of head-wind!) which pushed us through back to Geelong.
So in summing up, today we managed to:
- Drive 150km
- Ride 45km
- Train (steam variety) 16km
Not bad for a Sunday outing eh?
Well, as most of my blogs tend to, this one will also end with me drinking a beer.
I’m going to be sore tomorrow.
The Flaming Lips, still the most amazing live show i’ve seen by a long way.
The Fancy Boys, always makes me happy to see these guys live.
Ok, I need to be alone with my hangover now.
Well it’s Monday evening and already the weekend feels like ancient history, so it goes. This time I was lucky enough to catch a few fun activities though which always makes me feel better about the expanse of ‘work-days’ left until the next one. Those activities shall be chronicled here.
Firstly on Saturday we went along to the ‘Footscray 150‘ which surprisingly enough was a celebration of Footscray’s 150th birthday celebration. Aside from a blustering gale blowing through the mall it was actually a beautiful day and as such there was a massive crowd. It’s always a very different vibe on the weekend and this was no different, with loads of people filling the Nicholson street mall and Maddern Square. There was lots of nice food available and I was stoked for Marika to be able to experience eating Ful with me (it’s become a bit of a staple lunchtime meal now i’m working in Footscray again), I think i’ll buy some beans and make my own one of these days soon. Yeah, I guess it’s true. I (heart) Footscray.
On Sunday I tagged along with M and the Susanator on one of their ‘girlie-design days’, it may have just been the lure of an amazing breakfast in the beginning but I had a thoroughly good time.
Even if Cumulus was closed : (
First off we headed down to the ‘This is Not a Design Market‘ which was held in a cool old warehouse building down the bottom end of Bourke st. As you will see from my many ‘photos of the blurred kind’ I was quite taken with the space, probably wouldn’t want to live there but a great place for a market nonetheless. After my experiences at the last ‘Melbourne Design Market‘ left my heart blackened with hate I was pretty skeptical, however I was pleasantly surprised. There was tonnes of really interesting stuff here and most of the stall-holders didn’t have shops of their own so this was one of the few chances to really showoff their wares. Obviously there were still a few things that left me scratching my head (creativity + effort + time = price?), then again what do I know?
After a few more coffees we shed our traveling partner and embarked on the ‘Melbourne Open House‘ tour which was running. We’d been caught off guard last time and missed out on seeing a few of the places we’d wanted to visit and were keen to not miss out again. Well the Manchester Unity building still remains as our ‘white whale’ but we managed to check out a few of the others along the way. They included CH2 (finally!), Donkey Wheel House, Mission to Seafarers and finally Kangan Batman TAFE. Each of these buildings had some interesting elements or historical significance which made them all well worth checking out. Perhaps next year we’ll camp out and avoid some of the ridiculous queues on the more popular buildings.
Ok, roll on next weekend.
