Final rally at Melbourne

Friday, November 7th

Natasha took the day off, but needed to get a medical certificate because she told her school that she had a specialist appointment. She left the house around 8:30am, and I woke up around 9am to shower and start the day. Natasha came back and reported that she had a certificate for gastro. Yep, she pretended she caught it from her kids. Belinda, her teacher friend, also joined us for the day because she doesn't have to work on Friday. She is really nice and has a lovely fiance.

On our drive to Fitzroy Garden, we passed by the cathedral Belinda is getting married at. It looks beautiful. It is costing her AUD1,800 to have her wedding there. Luckily her mother is making her and the bridesmaids dresses and her sister is doing their hair to save money. It's also more special in my opinion. She showed us the dresses her mom made for her sister's wedding and it was beautiful. Very professional.

Our first stop at the Fitzroy Garden was the fairy garden, which housed the model village donated by England because Australia helped England with their food situation post WWII. It was not so impressive for a thankful memorial, but it was cute to see a bunch of little kids dressed as fairies.

We then went to the Sinclair cottage, thinking it was Cook's cottage. We took a quick photo anyhow because it was pretty. We did eventually find Cook's cottage. It was shipped to Melbourne in crates and barrels. Cook's cottage is supposed to display how simple life was during the 18th century in the village of ayron, only 15 years before Captain James Cook landed in Australia.

Next was the beautiful conservatory. It had a fountain in front that uses reclaimed water and warned us not to drink it. Melbourne is currently at stage 3a of a water drought, so the grass here is pretty brown and there's assigned hours to water the lawn. Natasha reckons kids will start drawing grass yellow and brown soon in their pictures. The conservatory had many pretty flowers. We told Belinda she should pick some for her wedding.

In the Fitzroy garden, there was also a JFK memorial. How nice to remember an American president. Unfortunately because of the drought, the pond surrounding the memorial had no water in it. I guess the priorities are Australian stuff first before American memorials. Afterwards, we somehow wandered into the parliament building, so we thought. We later realized it was the city museum and the parliament was across the street.

The sky started spitting on us, so we went to get some lunch at the Collins Place food court. We all got our different meals. I had sushi. Love sushi.

Back into the car we went without a destination. After some contemplation, the immigration museum was the location of choice. It was our plan until we couldn't find cheap parking. It was a bit ridiculous, AUD38-42 for 2hours. So out of the city we went, but first Natasha did a hook turn for us. When you make a right turn in a two way street in the city, you need to pull up to the far left corner of the intersection and wait for the other side light to turn green and then make the right. We almost got hit by the cars because they didn't realized we were doing a hook turn. Pretty crazy, but prevents blocking the road of oncoming traffic. It makes sense.

Because the rain started coming down harder, we decided to go to Melbourne port to have coffee at Campari. Bernice tried her first greek coffee. She thought it tasted like espresso. I had my skinny cappuccino and it had coco powder on it, which made it very yummy. The rain never stopped, so we just drove around to check out the expensive rich houses in the suburbs. It's funny to see these nice houses and the lawn is all yellow.

The drive back to Natasha's place was a bit long because there was a lot of traffic. We stopped by Nando's for some portuguese chicken meal. The fries came with peri-peri salt, which was a bit spicy. It was goooood. We then went back to the house to finish watching Newport Harbor and changed into dresses for our girls night out. I had to borrow an outfit from Natasha to stay warm. We then enjoyed our pre-drinks while watching Summer Heights High, an aussie version of the ali g show, but it's all made up. Really funny, would recommend watching it if you can get a hold of it.

Snez drove to Natasha's place to join us for the night. She is so nice. She drove us around that night so that Natasha could drink with us. We started off at silk road where Mel met us. Natasha had her sex and the city theme birthday party there. It really looks like a place carrie and the girls would go to. Huge chandeliers, with a very sexy vibe. We couldn't figure out how much the cocktails were, so we stuck to beer. I wanted paulaner at first, but they didn't have it, then carlsberg on draught, didn't have it, so eventually I got a hoegaarden. Had a few of them to get the night started.

After a few hours, Natasha wanted us to check out CQ where we can go dancing...and do shots. Silk road only made drinks on their menu and straight shooters. Natasha wanted us to try her favorite shots red pussy (vodka, peach schapps, cranberry) and jam donut (baileys and something else). Needless to say, we had a lot of yummy shots and had lots of fun dancing. It was also really nice that snez came out because she hasn't really been out since she had stefan. We had a great girls night out. Party till 3:30am, went back and slept right away since we need to wake up the next day at 9:30am to pack and head to the east coast.