My Aunt the Carnivorous Moose: 365 Pink Feather Boas All in a Row - Day 358 (Friday 24 Dec 2010) : I Love Melbourne in the Yuletide

What a glorious morning.

First day off work during the much longed for Christmas holidays, a ridiculously long sleep in - we didn't get going properly till 11 a.m. then lots and lots of shopping! We'd barely walked 20m down Equitable Place where the hotel is situated when we came across a fantastic cafe called Harry Roy's which was as funky as anything in Newtown, with great food and wonderful service, and again, that cafe in a laneway vibe Melbourne does so well.

Then we headed off for shopping, stopping at a store called RAP just around the corner from the hotel, which had really fun, one-of-a-kind 1/2 price Christmas cards, great gift ideas (we got Carolyn, my guy's sister, a thank you for loaning us your car gift there - a very funky candle burner, and my guy got me a funky plus toy cow called Cody) and super friendly staff, who could wrap gifts like nothing else! We then moved on to more stores, including a camera store, Minotaur (great pop culture stuff including a book I bought on the Brady Bunch and a great Family Guy gift for my housemate) and Dymocks ( we finally found Christmas hats to wear that night at Carols, as well as friendly staff and a huge queue, that thankfully moved fast), soaking up the Christmas vibe, checking out the fabulous Christmas tree and street decorations in Melbourne City, stopping briefly while Steve did some work back at the hotel. The lovely thing was feeling the stress just ebbing away. Lovely, with cherries on top!

The big event that night was Carols by Candlelight. We bought all our picnic supplies at a glorified convenienc store, Foodworks, with the weirdest shapped cucumber ever, and after packing all the food into the picnic basket Carolyn had provided, we set off for an event I have always thought was a tad daggy but had to attend now I was in Melbourne for Christmas Eve. It turned out to be lots of fun - the kids were all excited, it is really is strikingly beautiful when all the candles are lit (yes all those comments that celebrities would make about how gorgeous it looked from the stage were genuine and not cliched as I thought!) and people are in their myriad of varities Santa hats (the weird curving ones we bought at Dymocks earlier looked not unlike the cucumbers but they looked unique), the singing was great, and while it was more concert than singalong carols fest at times (Channel 9's warm up told us at various points to enjoy ourselves more especially when they were broadcasting...I thought we were enjoying ourselves!), and much of the carol singing was done in commercial breaks, we had a ball! The picnic was yum too - ham/avocado/cucumber Turkish rolls with eggplant dip on Grainwaves with Vanilla Coke to wash it all down. We both agreed we enjoyed ourselves far more than we expected, even loving the walk back into the City to our hotel room, and we have to do it again!