Bacon and eggs were delicious this morning cooked by Bree and overseen by Danni. Bree doesn’t see much kitchen time, so she was pretty rapped with her bacon and egg sandwich for me and the scrambled eggs and bacon for them on muffins. I am glad that we were organized yesterday and stopped at the supermarket, it was a great way to start what was going to be a busy day, well as busy as a shopping day could be…… tough for some I know, but someone has to do it right!!!!!
Today was a shopping day. I really had no plans while I was in Melbourne except to catch up with the girls. I was happy to go with the flow and the flow was going SHOPPING. I am not a full time shopper, I like to go to the shops and I would generally not leave without something in my hand, but to make a day of it was something different for me and I have to say I enjoyed the first day more than the second. We shopped at Harbour Town which was a 7 minute talk from the apartment which was awesome. We didn’t get moving till after 11am as Lisa had the day off and was going to be joining us today. I find it difficult walking into clothing shops that are designed for the ‘skinny’ people, as I know there is no way in hell that a single thing would fit me, but as Harbour Town has an outdoors set up we found that we were able to just browse and then know we would catch each other up in the next shops. We also had a common denominator of shoes, bags and perfume, so we all were able to spend a reasonable amount of time in these shops together. The perfume shop was of excellent value and ended up buying 3 bottles of perfume, as I could justify taking them to Africa. A woman always needs to smell good and I got a $50 bottle for $21, a $45 bottle for $6 bucks and the tester of the same perfume that was ¾ full for $2!!! They were sensational value. I was tempted to buy a pair of boots at one of the shoe shops that Bree and Danni had bought, but I thought about the practicality of wearing them in Ethiopia and knew it wouldn’t happen so I put them back on the shelf. I really am trying to limit what I buy and I have to think if I would need it, would I wear it, would I be drawing too much attention to myself if I was wearing it and each and every time I end up putting the product on the shelf. I did buckle and the girls were happy enough to take a load off as we stopped in City Chic (larger figure shop) and let me try on some dresses and give some opinions. It is a novelty for me to try dresses on and show people and as it was a discounted City Chic I did buy 2 dresses for $60 and if you know this store their dresses are normally around $120 each, so they literally were bargains and they will be dresses that will be coming to the UK and Ethiopia.
It was a great day and heading back to the apartment just before 4pm we stopped at the bottle shop on the way home and grabbed another 6 bottles of wine to stock up for our night tonight. I haven’t shopped for wine in a long long time and it is pretty cool to walk around the white wines especially and see what they are naming them all these days. Rock, Paper Scissors, Brown Cow, Seven Degrees and Ned to name a few. It is amazing what 8 bucks a bottle can get you these days and the wines have all been quite nice. We set up in the lounge room with some nibbles from the stash, a few bottles of wine and a movie as we waited for Dee to arrive from work and then we were going to head to dinner. Danni was smart enough to bring along some DVD’s from home which was great as we watched a few of them over the course of the few days we were here. It really is a magic view here and we also watched the sunset from the wall to floor glass walls and the golden reflection of the buildings on the water. Ahhhhh the serenity….. Dee arrived at 6.30pm and after another bottle of wine we decided to stick close to home and eat at one of the restaurants on the harbour front with the plan being we are going to have our BIG ‘Contiki Reunion Drinking’ night tomorrow night.
Amongst all that I sent an email to Zeme asking about the ‘housing’ requirements and what I need to bring with me and what will be readily available when I get there. I have no idea on how any of the this works in Addis Ababa, down to rentals, how long does it take, do I need any references, is it hard, is there availability? So I have asked all these questions and will see what Zeme comes back with on this.
Our third day was spent pretty much like the previous day. Dee and Lisa both had to work today, so we were going to see them at the apartment tonight before heading to Crown Casino for dinner and a few drinks. We caught the City Circle tram, which is free, to Melbourne Central for a second round at the shops. There are over 300 shops here which are contained underneath the shopping center’s massive glass cone that sits the Coop's Shot Tower which was built on the site in 1888. After last being used in 1961, the tower was retained to become a focal-point of the center, R.M. Williams and the Shot Tower Museum now take up the inside of it. The tower was also featured in the opening sequence of the 1997 Jackie Chan film Mr. Nice Guy. It looked pretty cool and a great focal point of the center. My shopping mojo wasn’t that enthused as yesterday, but was happy to walk the shops as the girls tried on shoes, clothes and our last shop was the Guess shop that had 75% off some of their stock. I was looking at a $200 bag that was marked down to $75 bucks, I was that serious I walked around the shop with it under my arm for the 30 minutes we were in there and then at the last minute I put it back on the shelf. I don’t need a Guess bag in Ethiopia. This was probably my only dance with the spending devil today and I felt good that I hadn’t bought anything else as I know that I don’t NEED anything, really…I don’t. We had lunch here and we also splurged on a beautiful cupcake that we took time out to enjoy before heading back to the apartment at around 2pm. The young un’s decided to head back to Harbour Town for some last minute buys, Mama (me) decided to stay in and have a small nana nap till they got home at 4pm and we watched another DVD over a few glasses of wine as we waited for Dee and Lisa.
I received an email from Europcar stating that there was damage to the rental car I had in Darwin. This is always a worry when you have a car rental and I know to check the car but the airport staff just gave me the diagram of the car and said that if I disagreed with the marked damage to come back and see them. Well I didn’t bother (bad move I was thinking now) and when I dropped the car there was no-one at the counter and dropped the key in the return box. I really wasn’t impressed as I knew I hadn’t had an accident, but then how do I known if someone didn’t hit me in a car park or something. I do have domestic travel insurance, so if it is a lot of damage I am covered, but it is a terrible feeling. They were going to hold an amount on my credit card till the damage had been assessed and the letter didn’t even tell me what the damage was or what the charge was? Well there was not much I could do from Melbourne, it was Thursday, and I would wait till I got back to Brisbane and just call them on Monday.
We opened one of the bottles of vodka in the evening to get us started as we got ready for our night out. We were all pretty stoked for the night. After finishing a whole bottle, we called a taxi and made it to Crown Casino just after 9pm. Crown Casino and Entertainment Complex is located on the south bank of the Yarra River. Crown's current casino complex opened in 1997, after moving from its original location from 1994 on the north bank of the Yarra. It is one of the central features of the Southbank area in the central business district. The entire complex has a space of 510,000 m² which is equivalent to 2 city blocks, making it the largest casino complex in the Southern Hemisphere and one of the largest in the world. We decided to eat first, started possibly a little late after the consumption of a bottle of vodka at the apartment, but better late than never to line the stomach for the alcohol beverages that were to follow. We just decided to eat at one of the cheaper bistros, where the meals were decently priced and I could get a glass of house wine for $3, and apparently it is the same wine served in the Players Club upstairs, so it was a good drop!!!! After dinner we decided to just stay at Crown and go to one of the nightclubs they had in their entertainment precinct. It was cold outside and we really couldn’t be bothered braving the cold and walking around to find a place to drink when we really had it all here anyway. We ended up at Fusion where we had to pay a $15 cover charge to get in. That stopped us briefly as we assessed how busy it was in there for our value for money. It was just past 11pm and the bouncer chick said it is only early but should pick up in the next hour, so we decided it was worth it and paid the cover. I can’t even remember the last time I had to pay a cover charge to get into somewhere to drink. Ibiza comes to mind straight up, but after that…….. The chick bouncer was right and after midnight the club really filled up and we were able to dance and boogie the night away till around 2.30am when we decided to call it a night and catch a taxi home.
My flight wasn’t till 2pm, but we had to be out of the apartment at 10am, so I needed to get some shut eye as I still hadn’t packed but wasn’t too worried, even with the new purchases, I would have room, as that is the beauty of travelling with a suitcase…. It is the small things that make a travelers life a little more enjoyable.
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