My Aunt the Carnivorous Moose: Swimming Pretty in the Glass-Half-Full 2012: Day 287

Early start for a Saturday.

Up at 5.30 am to get flight to Melbourne at 8.05 am after about 6 hours sleep. Morning was beautiful though ...

Made it to the airport in plenty of time - lovely taxi driver who chatted but not too much and had a boot full of Afghani bread for his apparently very hungry friend - and since we had no check in luggage, we had plenty of time for a burnt croissant (it looked nice before its immolation), a dry-ish raspberry muffin and coffee of chocolate.

Made it to the gate with plenty of time to spare and by pure luck met Matt and David, who we had been meaning to have dinner with for ages, at the gate. They were off to Melbourne to run in the half-marathon, which is part of the Melbourne marathon, and so via Steve's lovely sister Carolyn, who came to give is a lift, we gave them a lift into the city, had brunch with them at Caffe Panette in South Melbourne before dropping them at their hotel - after a minor accident where a man fresh from chemo ran up the back of Carolyn's car (minor damage thanks to her tow bar) - and going to our hotel ...

Pure mango juice - YUM!

Delicious corn fritters

The thankfully barely scratched bumper of Carolyn's car

Oh and the hotel was SO funky and hip and idiosyncratic and slick and colourful ... LOVED IT. From hip coffee machines, gum ball machines and pastries in the lobby to astro turf covered lounges on level 1where we were staying in room # 102, the place was just so much fun ... the doors were all insanely bright colours too and the room itself, a lovely compact but roomy enough for two studio, fitted out with all sorts of cool furniture and a FREE minibar (mostly water and juice) and a "Bag of Loot" with peanuts, Skittles, Gummy Bears and chips inside ... even a fun greeting on the chalkboard strip down the wall near the window ...

So of course we made lots of use of it ... and napped. Yes I felt vaguely guilty we were using time in Melbourne to sleep but after a busy week, it was the only way we were going to enjoy the rest of the day.

We hit the sunny streets of Melbourne - well mostly bar the occasional half hearted drizzle - about 2.30 pm and had a ball wandering through Chinatown down to the Mall, my fave pop culture store, Minotaur, Union Lane to see the latest graffiti art, a kitchen wares store so Steve could get new spring-loaed tongs homewares store Rap, the various arcades, the Teddy Bear Shop, JB Hifi to get the 5 nieces and nephews iTunes gift cards and Typo to get envelopes for the cards and then raced back to hotel to get ready to go out ...

Here's the Hare Krishna artist at work on his masterpiece

Dragoncon was on so lots of people in the store in cos-play

He had his arm out pleading to be bought but I didn't. I feel bad.

None of the free city trams were running so Steve and I had to walk like madmen - thankfully on a very cold night - 5-6 blocks up the city to Rialto Towers where Andrew And Monika met us in the lobby. I felt SO bad that we were 40 minutes late but they were very understanding and we hotfooted it up to the 55th floor bar (after a 10 minute wait) for cocktails (Monika and I) and beers (Steve and Andrew). View was amazing and staff so friendly - we ended up sitting at the bar - and we happily stayed till we had to leave at 7.30 to get to our 8pm booking at Hihiu, a Japanese tapas restaurant that turned out to be only 2 blocks from our hotel (Steve left at 7.10 to get to his uni reunion, which is the while reason we were here in the first place).

The food, while not great in quantity was delicious, the Umeshu (Japanese plum wine) was fabulous and the general of the place was funky as hell. LOVED IT! (Monika found it in a gourmet foodies magazine so it was a first for both of them too.)

Then off to Double Happiness, a communist propaganda themed bar for more cocktails, then The Supper Club/Siglo Bar where we failed to get a seat so headed next door to The Wine Shop for a fabulous white wine from Gippsland.

We did try to find one other bar after that but it became too hard and so I headed back to the hotel and Andrew and Monika caught a taxi home ...

A WONDERFUL AWESOME NIGHT. (Steve finally in about 1.30 am.)