Short but sweet in Melbourne

Once we actually made it to Melbourne, we had the chance to catch up with my speechie friend Jody.  She's a Brisbane girl (Gold Coast hinterlands, actually) but decided to make a change and move to the big city of Melbourne.  Now she has an amazing job, and a great boyfriend, and seems to be living the dream!  After sitting through gazillions of intern conversations, it was so awesome to have a speechie talk!  Jody's work is fairly similar to mine - she goes around to several aged care residences and does swallowing assessments, some communication therapy, and in-services for staff.  She has also recently been accredited to a couple of private hospitals.  We arrived at Jody and Matt's place and sat down for a quick drink while deciding between a few dinner options.  Mexican won out, and so we went to Taco Bill's for yummy food, fishbowl drinks, and free sombreros.  Trying to get a taxi back to the house was a bit of a chore, compounded by gale force COLD winds, which made Jeremy feel like he was back in Canada.  We finally managed to secure a taxi and then proceeded to stay up way too late talking and talking and talking and talking.

The next day, we headed into the Melbourne CBD for some wandering around aimlessly.  I was obsessed with finding this Japanese store where everything is $2.80 and once we did that, I was happy to do anything!  We ended up taking a walk to the Victoria Markets, where I found a Team Canada hockey jersey for $30.  Our time in the CBD was much too short, but we had to get back to the car before the meter ran out because receiving a parking ticket would have been rather unfortunate.  We decided to head to our hotel to rest up before meeting with some more friends for dinner.  We were staying in St Kilda, in what turned out to be a very Jewish area of the city.  Apparently Melbourne has the third largest Jewish population in the world, after Israel and NYC.  This was lucky for us, because it meant REAL BAGELS!!!  We very excitedly took our bagels with brisket and pickles to our hotel and devoured them.  Jeremy was (surprise surprise) quite looking forward to his nap, and I wanted to go for a swim in the indoor pool and do some reading.  Disappointment: the pool was closed or renovations - annoying when that is one of the main reasons you book a hotel!  Grrrrr.  Oh well. 

We got ourselves prettied up and met our friend Louise at the 'Transport Bar'.  It was hopping on a Saturday night.  We stayed for a drink and decided to head to Little Collins St for dinner.  We had a delicious Italian dinner - but I can't remember the name of the restaurant!  Oops.  Another friend, Adrian, found us here and we continued on to attempt a 'bar hop' of classy Melbourne venues.  Sadly, we realized that we really are getting much too old for this!  The places were nice, and had beautiful elaborate decorations and lots of character...but it was sooooo loud!  Our attempt ended before midnight and we were quite excited about just getting back to the hotel and going to sleep!  Ack.  The next day would be filled with never ending driving...