Last weekend James and I headed over to Melbourne for some fun and frivolity- I had booked some cheap flights back last February and organised to use them on a weekend I knew I would be off- though I have to admit I almost chickened out of going, feeling quite uptight about leaving the house again!! But I didn't cancel, we had a brilliant time and the house was fine once we returned home again :-)

For some reason I thought when I booked the flights it would be a great idea to take the first flight out of Adelaide on Friday morning- I have no idea what possessed me to do this- it meant we had to get up at 4.30am to make it to the airport by 5.30am, ready to fly out by 6.10am!! But since I was in bed by around 8.30pm the night before I ended up being wide awake by 3.30am- and James didn't even complain too loudly at the early rising.

We arrived in Melbourne just after 8am (EST) and eventually made our way to the hotel- I had made a hotel booking online when I booked the flights and saw The Stork Hotel, quite cheap and it looked pretty good. At the time I didn't realise it was a "pub hotel" which didn't really matter since all we really needed was a bed not all the trappings of luxury- unfortunately though this hotel did not really have any trappings of luxury whatsoever so I became James' standing joke the whole weekend. Though even James would have to admit that at least the food there was pretty good!

Anyway... to cut a long story short, the hotel was just across the road from the Queen Victoria Markets so over the course of the weekend we walked through them a couple of times which was great. We also walked all through the city- down to Bourke Street and Southbank, went to Lygon Street for dinner on the Friday night and indulged in some of it's famous Italian food and even had the luxury of being driven there by a couple of friends who inadvertently gave us a tour of the city whilst trying to find a restaurant to eat at! On Saturday we took the train to Bentleigh to catch up with some family friends and then back into the city by mid-afternoon to see another friend who introduced us to the delights of Max Brenner- and we even caught a movie while we were in town!

It was great to catch up with people who we hadn't seen for at least a year- actually, it'd been at least 6 years since I'd seen some of them! We definitely made the most of our weekend away, and then touched back down in Adelaide by just after 12.30pm Sunday afternoon. James relaxed in front of the tv while I continued my socialising by seeing my friend Carla and little James- eventually getting home by around 6pm after we'd collected the cats! Unfortunately we were both back at work early on Monday morning but the tiredness was well worth it!

We didn't take many photos but here are a few in the city:

The Yarra River, looking down towards the Melbourne Cricket Ground (MCG) on the right

James in the city

THE STORK! (I'll never live that one down!)