We're enjoying a birthday bonanza here (and there) this month .........
Last week there were three reasons to celebrate. There was Sophie's birthday on the 14th ....
With a gorgeous cake made with big sisterly love ......
It all reminded me of a sisters' picture I'd taken a few years ago (11 to be exact) - they really haven't changed all that much have they (still gorgeous)?
Judy's birthday was next (on the 15th)...... and then ...... on St Patrick's Day in Melbourne it was time to celebrate James's BIG (ending in a zero!) birthday.
The venue was the Union Club Hotel on Gertrude St in Fitzroy (Offspring territory) - Richmond Tigers territory too!
The Canberra mob was well represented...
And all James and Fiona's gorgeous family were there .........
Bib zero birthdays call for funny speeches from the kids .......................
James and all the family are the fiercest supporters of the Richmond Tigers!
Happy birthday dear James!
We had to say goodbye yesterday morning in Fitzroy after a wonderful breakfast together. The pic below is special to me .... probably the last time I will see James and Fiona and their lovely family in Melbourne together for quite a while (they're New Zealand bound!).
We stayed on in Fitzroy for the weekend, loving being in the centre of this lively, hip and happening part of Melbourne. We headed out to St Kilda Beach yesterday afternoon - drinks at the Stokehouse on the beach and then back to town to enjoy fabulous Japanese food at Ichi Ni Na Na on Brunswick Street. This is a wonderful city!!
We enjoyed a rendezvous with some dear friends in Melbourne this week - including our favourite old inner city hotel - the Rendezvous in Flinders Street, just a short stroll from Flinders Street Station and the famous, vibrant laneways of this most cosmopolitan city.
We drove down from Canberra on Monday - an easy 7 hour drive. It was getting dark by the time we'd settled in to the hotel so we took to the neighbouring streets and laneways to absorb some Melbourne city charm and shake off the inactivity of a day driving. We celebrated afterwards with a glass of ale at the top floor bar of our favourite Young and Jackson Hotel - and raised a glass to Melbourne's iconic Chloe.
Our main aim on Tuesday was to rendezvous with the Vincent Van Gogh and the Seasons exhibition at the National Gallery of Victoria.
..... while acknowledging, on the way in, the latest Ai Wei Wei installation in the gallery foyer - a new 5 metre tall work of crystals and light from his chandelier series....Wow!
The Van Gogh exhibition comprises the largest collection of his artworks ever to travel to Australia - amazing works lent by leading international museums. Another huge attraction for us is the audio guide to the exhibition: a beautiful, informative narration by David Stretton, and David Wenham as the voice of Vincent (reading the words of Vincent through the many hundreds of letters he wrote over his short life to his brother Theo).
Vincent's south of France pictures are still as buttery fresh and full of energy as the day they were painted over 120 years ago!
...such a treat to see these works in Melbourne - and in late Autumn too, Vincent's favourite season.
Tuesday night we enjoyed a rendezvous with dear friends James and Fiona - at their beautiful old Victorian era terrace house in Gore Street Fitzroy, then on to the atmospheric Builders Arms Hotel on Gertrude Street, before heading to dinner at the Panama Dining Room on Smith Street, a wonderful overview of some of the best offerings in this super cool part of old Melbourne (with the coolest hosts you could ever imagine).
In the pic below Rob and I are about to share a whole slow cooked lamb shoulder with a pistachio crust and quince jus with parsley and sumac salad. It was to die for (and enough protein to last us at least a month)!!
We had a slow start yesterday - before deciding to take a tram ride to St Kilda Beach - all the way down to the foreshore area, past sad old Luna Park.....
..... while shivering in the wind blowing off Port Phillip Bay ......
..and eventually arriving at Pontoon at the Stokehouse precinct on Jacka Boulevard (thank you for the recommendation Fiona).
Pontoon proves to be a wonderful spot to chill out for a while over a glass of Pinot Grigio (for me) on a cold, windy afternoon while we try to define how Melbourne is so gloriously different from Sydney.
Our thoughts include:
Melbourne is John Brack, Sydney is Brett Whiteley
Sydney is brash and beautiful and a bit bogan too, Melbourne is bohemian, cultured and cosmopolitan (and no doubt more than a bit bogan too)
Sydney is all colour, energy, bright blue skies and Pacific Ocean, Melbourne is monochrome, gentler, more thoughtful and wise.........
But we think that James is the one who's nailed it: Sydney is the girl you spend the night with but Melbourne is the girl you marry!!
Love Melbourne!
The best way to start the day in Melbourne is with a strong coffee in one of the atmospheric inner city lane way cafes. This morning we had the added joy of being able to listen to a busker playing some ethereal pieces on his cello for the whole time we were drinking coffee and planning our day.
We met up with Rob's old friend David and his Vanessa for lunch at a little (very long and narrow) hole in the wall Thai restaurant on Victoria Road in Richmond. David ordered all his favourites for us: green papaya salad, steamed salmon green curry, whole snapper, Tom Yum, seafood fried rice...the most delicious fresh food.
We've caught up with David and Van twice this year, once in Canberra and this time in Melbourne. We're making up making for some lost time!
We walked up Victoria Road after, to catch one of the free city trams on La Trobe Street, and we both thought we would love to buy this neo-Classical style terrace as our Melbourne "pad"....but only if the current owners agree to leave that Rover Thomas painting above the fireplace.
We celebrated our last night in Melbourne tonight with another wonderful meal out with friends of Maxie and Rod's at Maha, Shane Delia's celebrated Middle East inspired restaurant, just around the corner from our hotel, in Bath Street.
We chose a four course set menu which included some amazing dishes like ketalfi oysters with sour onion hummus with pomegranate, duck and fig bastilla, beef short ribs, 2 hour roasted lamb shoulder and some desserts to die for. We all loved the Turkish delight filled doughnuts with rosewater honey, but this halva parfait with yoghurt icecream and sesame tuille was very yummy too.....
...as was this Pedro Ximenez cake, and olive oil icecream (again) with rosemary and candied fennel (and chocolate soil).
Our day started with breakfast at Madamimadam (Madam I'm Adam), in one of our favourite Melbourne lane ways off Collins Street, before heading up to the Ian Potter Centre at Federation Square to see the "200 Years of Australian Fashion" exhibition.
All of us enjoyed seeing this comprehensive collection of clothing from the earliest days of the colony right up to the present, including pieces from the most recent Melbourne Fashion week.
Our favourites were the exuberant fashions of the 80s - when a really distinctive Australian aesthetic started to be evident - especially in the fabulous creations of Jenny Kee and Linda Jackson et al.
.....and the wonderful designs of Akira Isogawa whose Japanese inspired aesthetic is a dominant theme in all the current collections.
Afterwards, while we were still in the mood for fashion we took ourselves off to Cose Ipanema at the Paris end of Collins Street, on Jeremy's recommendation. A big thrill here was seeing an inspiring collection of Kate Durham's jewellery. We didn't buy anything at this high end store but rewarded ourselves all the same afterwards with a pot of Cloudy Wheat Beer from Young & Jackson (home of the iconic Chloe) on the corner of Flinders Street and Swanston Street.
We met Fiona W. and Elizabeth for an early meal at Mamacita on Collins Street tonight. Mamacita is a small but very popular contemporary inner city Mexican restaurant - beautiful fresh flavoursome food but wildly crowded and noisy - even at 5.30pm in the evening. There was already a long queue waiting for tables as we left the restaurant around 7.00pm.
With the night still young we made our way up to the 34th floor of the quietly opulent Sofitel Hotel for a drink and a chat and a chance to admire the sumptuous surroundings.
This pic below of Fiona and Maxie was taken in the Ladies loos - with one of the best views you'll find in the CBD - overlooking Fitzroy Gardens out towards the Dandenong Ranges.
We enjoyed breakfast in the stimulating communal spaces at Studio Schaller - the carefully curated collections are displayed so invitingly - it would really be a fun space to spend hours in!!
But we were on our way to Melbourne today!!
After an easy drive down the highway and an even easier run into the city we were able to drop our cases off at the Rendezvous Hotel on Flinders Street and make our way South of the CBD to the Royal Botanic Gardens in time for lunch.
We wanted to try the food at Jardin Tan - the beautiful contemporary Vietnamese cafe adjacent to the Garden's Visitor Centre. We loved their fresh and delicately flavoured Pho and fragrant salads - although we missed out on the setting under the fig tree today!
We spent the rest of the afternoon at the National Gallery of Victoria - at the amazing Ai Wei Wei - Andy Warhol exhibition. There are over 300 pieces of art work of every size shape and media in this exhibition...enough to look at, think about and learn from for at least a week...but we took in as much as we could over two hours or so!
The curators had done a wonderful (and surprising) job of drawing the parallels and intersections between the work of these two iconic artists..it was a very thought provoking exhibition!
,
Ai Wei Wei has shocked a lot of us with what he has done with priceless Han dynasty and Neolithic era pottery (which is nothing compared to what happened in the Cultural Revolution).
And this work was constructed from Lego!!
Andy Warhol has played around a lot with making art out of everyday materials and imagery (among other things) to surprise us too!
Flowers and seeds figure a lot in Ai We Wei's recent works - but used in very powerful contexts as a means of protest. He used the bunch of fresh flowers image in his bike basket every day for two years or so (for the benefit of the surveillance cameras) as a protest against the loss of his passport to the Chinese authorities.
and Andy Warhol worked with flowers too!
We stayed until the gallery closed this afternoon - still a long way short of seeing everything this amazing exhibition offers. But what an experience!
We returned to the Rendezvous - a very grand old Melbourne Hotel in the old style - but very well preserved and maintained now. We are very happy to be here!
With a gorgeous cake made with big sisterly love ......
It all reminded me of a sisters' picture I'd taken a few years ago (11 to be exact) - they really haven't changed all that much have they (still gorgeous)? 
Judy's birthday was next (on the 15th)...... and then ...... on St Patrick's Day in Melbourne it was time to celebrate James's BIG (ending in a zero!) birthday.
The Canberra mob was well represented...
And all James and Fiona's gorgeous family were there .........
Bib zero birthdays call for funny speeches from the kids .......................
James and all the family are the fiercest supporters of the Richmond Tigers!
Happy birthday dear James!
We had to say goodbye yesterday morning in Fitzroy after a wonderful breakfast together. The pic below is special to me .... probably the last time I will see James and Fiona and their lovely family in Melbourne together for quite a while (they're New Zealand bound!). 
We stayed on in Fitzroy for the weekend, loving being in the centre of this lively, hip and happening part of Melbourne. We headed out to St Kilda Beach yesterday afternoon - drinks at the Stokehouse on the beach and then back to town to enjoy fabulous Japanese food at Ichi Ni Na Na on Brunswick Street. This is a wonderful city!!
