South Yarra

Today, the first day of our (hopefully!) stress free holiday begins! After having trouble with staff travel on our last trip, we decided to purchase full fare tickets for this trip, rather than have the anxiety of flying standby. Ted had found a well-priced airfare to Asia in business class on Philippine Airlines to help make this holiday an overall easier experience.

We woke at 6am to get ready, before making our way to Adelaide airport for our connecting flight to Melbourne. We had already dropped Snoopy off at doggy day care yesterday, so his morning was basically just eating breakfast, turning off the appliances, and locking up the house. Our neighbour Gerry had offered to drive us to the airport which was greatly appreciated. Ted suggested we get dropped off near the Atura hotel, which ended up being naughty since it isn’t allowed, and the kerbside attendant advised us not to do it again!

After checking in our bag and buying a coffee, we chilled out until our flight to Melbourne in business class. Even though it was premium class, they still didn’t have a vegetarian breakfast option! So I had to push the bacon and sausages aside to enjoy the corn fritters. When we arrived in Melbourne, we were a bit taken aback at the cost of the Uber to our apartment, but since a taxi was the same price, realised it was unavoidable.

The apartment in South Yarra was very nice and suitable, although it’s interesting to see how many apartment buildings there are in close proximity. After leaving our bags, we quickly made our way to the Oriental Teahouse to see our former housemate Gudron, whom we haven’t seen in over a year (over two years for Ted), as well as her boyfriend Tom. The food was very good, and Gudron and I shared the vegetarian options whilst Ted and Tom were the carnivores. Tom even kindly paid for the meal which was completely unexpected.

We chilled in our apartment afterwards before going out for dinner at a nearby Italian restaurant called Caffe y Cucina. Ted and I don’t usually eat at pricey restaurants but we had been gifted a Gourmet Restaurant card from our neighbours so we felt we could justify it. Saying that, the food was very good (we both had pasta) as was the wine. It was definitely an authentic venue too, with a lot of history and atmosphere.

Since we have an early start tomorrow, we decided to stay in and watch “Mrs. Doubtfire” as opposed to going out partying all night.Read more