Eileen had been trying to get us down to Melbourne for ages, so we figured it was finally time to go. We caught the late Friday night flight from Sydney and landed in Melbs about 10pm. We cabbed it to Fitzroy and then met up with Eileen for a late dinner. It was hoppin’! We crashed at Eileen’s flat that night and met her awesome roommate Susan over breakfast. Saturday morning we mooched around the Rose Street Artists’ Market before buying some tram tickets and heading into the city!

Our first stop in the CBD was actually the new Morris and Sons shop, which I hadn’t seen since it opened. It’s lovely! Then we walked down to Riverland for a lunch of sausages and beer along the banks of the Yarra. I snapped a self-portrait.

We did some more shopping in the CBD, including finally getting our very own “Settlers of Catan”! (You will all be assimilated.) Then it was time to head over to Melbourne Central where our friend Toast was competing in the Australian Rubik’s Cube Nationals. (Yes, really.) Here he is solving a Rubik’s Cube blindfolded.

Frankly, we were all as astonished as you are. This is a real, actual thing. Competitors are shown a cube which they then “memorise.” Once they’re satisfied they’ve got it, they pull down a blindfold and start solving. (Their time includes the memorisation part.) The event was mostly young guys – with one young Asian girl! – and some of them were amazing at it. Unfortunately Toastman didn’t do as well as he’d hoped, but that’s probably because he had us three standing right in front of him making him nervous.

Saturday night we went out to the Terminus Hotel in North Fitzroy for our friend Dean’s birthday dinner. It’s an awesome pub/restaurant, and the food was great. Needless to say, we weren’t observing our diet on this weekend…

On Sunday all four of us (me, Rodd, Eileen, and Susan) piled into a GoGet car and headed out to the Mornington Peninsula, about 90 minutes outside Melbourne. It was beautiful! We headed straight to Cape Schanck Lighthouse, all the way down at the Southern tip overlooking Bass Strait.

There’s a boardwalk that offers some spectacular views of the coast on the east and west sides of the peninsula. Here’s the Snook and I with the eastern cliffs behind us.

We clambered down the boardwalk to get closer to the water. It was chilly but not too windy out there.

Snookums took this photo of me. It was bright.

Here’s the Snook standing at a rocky beach at the shore. It was all lava flow so the rocks were black. It was very peaceful… until a family with like 8 kids turned up.

My old man and the sea.

Did I mention we were staying AT the lighthouse? They have accommodation! We were booked into the Red Cottage. After we checked in and dropped off our stuff, it was time to hit the wineries…

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