Saturday, April 10, 2010

Listing on the internet

Hi Guys,
To get my messages out in to the ether I need to verify that I am the author ;)
I like the word "author", never thought of it for myself until now.. i Guess we are all authors of our own destination GUR44KZAVXQM, is my destination today!!

Chinese Massage and Oriental tea house

Hi Guys!
I have to tell you about the best Yum Cha in Melbourne!

Louise and I woke up to a sunny day and rolled out of bed. Wow, it is a great feeling having time off and doing what you want!!
We decided to go for a long walk and explore Melbourne by foot.
The first thing we went to was Fitzroy Garden conveniently located 5 min from our little hotel.
In Fitzroy park we found Captain Cooks original home delivered from Yorkshire UK.

http://www.visitvictoria.com/displayObject.cfm/objectid.00004969-98E0-1DB4-9D0380C476A90000/vvt.vhtml

Interesting and the best of all was the guy in the souvenir shop! Talk about loving his job, he could not stop talking about Captain Cook, we absolutely got our moneys worth out of him.
We meandered down to the green house and walked through, not wishing the girls in there to much sun as it was quite hot and steamy in there. We took of to Flinders ave and walked down toward the central part of Melbourne. As it was Easter friday we passed a chathedral so packed with people they had speakers out on the street as there was at least 100 people outside as well as a packed church. Very nice! We found ourself having to go through the masses and we were wished "Happy Easter" by every one, even the police wished us Happy Easter. Really Nice!

We bought an all day tram ticket and hopped on the tram.
Melbourne have a great trams system!
Almost as good as my home town Gothenburg in Sweden.

My friend Elaine had told me about a great place to have lunch, Chapel street in Praharan.
Armed with a tourist map and an all day tram ticket we went to Praharan, and with out a passport!!

It was a different world, almost like Soho NYC 20 years ago. We walked around and finally found the Oriental tea house.
We got great service and even better atmosphere, green tea and the food just went on coming. I truly recommend that you visit this little gem if you ever visit Melbourne.
"THE ORIENTAL TEA HOUSE" on Chapel street Praharan.
http://www.orientalteahouse.com.au/photos/w1/i1001216/

We left with a full belly and walked back , got lost in the shops, and found a lovely Chinese acupuncture/massage place. As I had a frozen shoulder and was in pain, I walked in.
$30 later my shoulder was healed and booth the little china man and I was totally worn out . he did a great job... forwarned me that I would have pain "tomollow"... did I ever.. and a hugh lovley bruce to remind me of him. Hey, I am not complaining .. different pain and full movement in my arm, Thank you :)

We took the tram back to the City and went to the Casino, to try our luck !
Our luck was that some one had made a BIG MISTAKE and locked most of the machines via computer and you could only play at the tables.
We played at the Piano bar instead, with a cosmopolitan and some free food.
We did not need a lot of persuasion to go home to bed, after all we had been out walking for 12 hours and after two cosmopolitan, sent on our merry way.
What a great Easter Friday !!

Monday, April 5, 2010

Cosco and Mayo in a jar

Happy Easter!!!
Louise and I went to Melbourne for the week end. The purpose for the trip was to get away and have some fun, and go shopping at COSCO wholesale.

We drove and drove through a very beautiful and for a change in 50 year ( I have been told), a green Australian out back. We started on Wednesday afternoon and got as far as Gundagai, where we stayed at the Budget Motel, in a purple clean room, charing the facilities with 100 truckies, we felt safe and slept like babies.
The next morning was glorious with sun and mist on the ground, the Coppers having "brekkie" at McDonald as one does! Especially if you are with Weight Watchers, as we are.
Whops! Hope Kate won't read this .

The countryside offered rolling green hills and a wast landscape you only find in Australia, the road was straight as an arrow for hours, and we were ahead of every one!
We stopped of in Aulbury for a quick pit stop, coffee and Dan Murphy's for some wine for the week end.
Aulbury turned out to be a beautiful little town with plenty of golf courses and good shopping.
The landscape did not change much as we drove towards Melbourne, but it was a feast for the eye to just let is slide by outside the car window.
Louise had bought a new Car, white with large windows LOL and a built in navigator !
Great we thought and left the Tom- Tom at home, big mistake !!!
As we approched Melbourne in the late afternoon, we wanted to go by COSCO to check it out before the Easter Friday close down. So we put in the Docklands and the street adress, the navigator took us to, God know where........ we eventually got there, more by default than with navigation help.
Finally we entered the world of huge shopping carts and free sample food. We joined as members, was photographed and printed out with little white memeber cards with our faces on them.

We could not resist the seafood counter and bought our dinner, giant Alaskan crab legs and oysters. Louise wanted Mayo, she found Hellman's real mayo in a 5 kg jar !!!
She had to buy it :)
Louise have carried that jar with her as her Teddy bear, in and out at every hotel room on this trip.
You see the Jar and then you see Louise !!

We checked everything out at COSCO and decided to come back on Saturday before we were due to drive back.

Just as a tip, if you ever go out of State with your navigation system, make sure it changes from one State to another. We learned the hard way!!

We left COSCO around 6 pm and thought we headed towards the hotel in Melbourne East. Wrong!
We were still driving back and forth at 9pm calling the poor man at the hotel asking for directions. He asked us " where are you?" We had no idea. We stopped and tried to ask at a petrol sation, The "moron" refused to tell us if we did not buy a $30 map. I do not want to tell you what we said.

We called the hotel again as we now knew where we were, the guy told us, Take a left on to Hunt road and then another left on to commonwealth road and then a right to , well it was not Hunt road but Punt road...... Oh dear we went around the stadium again and decided it has to be Punt and not Hunt, and did the exercise one more time and finally arrived at 9 pm. We logged the food and Mayo jar upstairs, as we had the top floor with no lift !! Yippie. So good to move the legs after having sitting for so long :)

We had a lovely dinner and some well deserved wine, before passed out.