Following the success of Friday Road Trip, the Labour Day long weekend saw us (me, Shellie, Thanh, April, Haz and Gaz) pile into two cars for more driving and llama seeking. This trip had a slightly different focus from the previous one – instead of food, our goal was an op shop crawl.
There was still food involved of course, as we scheduled in a lunch stop. Plus we were looking for food styling props so… it always comes back to food in the end.
It’s the circle of a food blogger.
It was one of the hottest days in 2013, I had a Friday off work, and my DD was back from a month long holiday.
It called for a Friday Road Trip.
We roped in Thanh and Shellie, piled into Shellie’s car and headed down the Peninsula. On the drive down there was Spice Girls car singalong (yep, we have no shame), alpaca spotting (llama llama llama!) and a stop at the Vintage Shed for food blogging photo props.
Disclosure: We visited Ballarat courtesy of Ballarat Regional Tourism.
Recently Alastair and I headed up to Ballarat for a long weekend.
About 1.5 hours drive from Melbourne, Ballarat has quite a rich history, being one of Victoria’s most significant gold rush boom towns.
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My friend Maztech and I have birthdays a few days apart. For our birthday in 2011, we booked in an early birthday lunch at Loam. We loved it so much that for our 2012 birthdays in December we visited again, dragging along Alastair and Dazzle.
There’s so many good things about summer: the long days, the sunshine, the fruit. Oh, the fruit! All of my favourites are in season: mangoes, lychees, blueberries and cherries.
The cherry season in Victoria runs from late November to January, and several orchards around Melbourne have the option to pick your own fruit.
Tired of going to lunch at wineries? Yeah, me too. Wineries are so last year – the latest destination dining is in a garden.
Okay, that is not true. 🙂 But we did eat lunch in a garden recently when Annette and Terry, Alastair’s mum and step-dad, arrived the other week for a visit. They arrived during the week when we had the beautiful autumn weather: coldish mornings, but lovely warm days, blue skies and wonderful sunsets. Having flown in from the UK, Annette and Terry were particularly happy to see the sunshine, and it was perfect weather for lunch at Fork to Fork. Fork to Fork is located in Heronswood, a garden that is the home of The Diggers Club.
At the risk of sounding like a 90 year old – the modern world constantly impresses and delights me. Even though I grew up with so many technologies that we now take for granted, when I think about them they still amaze me. For example: GPS. We all know what GPS is, since it’s now an everyday thing, but have you ever thought about what’s involved in making it work? It’s a space-based global navigation satellite system – hello, SATELLITES in fricking SPACE. That tell you exactly where you are. If that’s not amazing, I don’t know what is.
However, even with all the wonders of technology, it’s not exactly foolproof. Case in point: last year we used the GPS to direct us to Loam in Portarlington. It sent us down a dirt road and then said, “You have arrived at our destination.”
Except… we were still in the middle of nowhere. We were definitely not at Loam.
Did we have the right address? Were we even in the right suburb? Where on earth were we?! (Well, the GPS told us, but could we trust the GPS?) We kept driving down the road, and then lo and behold: LOAM. We had arrived! (Mostly thanks to the GPS.)
How did people decide on places to eat and activities to do before the internet? When I started planning our Mornington Peninsula weekend a couple of days before heading down there, I looked at blogs, websites, checked out menus, and I even made restaurant bookings online.
One place I booked was La Petanque, located in Red Hill, Mornington Peninsula. It’s a casual, southern French style restaurant seating 60 that’s located in a rustic wooden building with rose and herb gardens leading to the entrance. Inside, it’s all wooden floors, wooden ceiling beams, tables with white tablecloths and large windows.
I’m an awesome trip planner. And I’m really good at choosing places to eat.
Hah – modest much? During our weekend away in the Mornington Peninsula, Alastair heard these two statements a lot. Perhaps I blew my own trumpet once too often when my normally patient husband replied, “Yes, and you have no trouble talking yourself up either.”
But the fact of the matter is: it was a great weekend. And I planned it. Surely that’s worth being proud of? Toot toot!
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Last month, Maria and her bf Daz roped us into a fishing day (catchafish!). Maria has set Daz 30 tasks to do before he turns 30 (30 before 30), and with one of them being “catch a fish and cook it”, we headed to the Rainbow Trout farm in Macclesfield.
I know, I know. Going to a fish farm to catch a fish. How bloody city can we get? But being total city to my core and never having fished before, I was quite happy to go to a fish farm. So we drove up to Macclesfield, having to take a little detour prior to Emerald as the Puffing Billy race meant that the road we wanted to take was closed. Detouring resulted in our GPS trying to send us down single lane unpaved dirt roads, not a route we would normally want to take. At one point, to Alastair’s frustration, the GPS said turn left, I said turn right, and Bro in the back seat told Alastair to go straight. (He turned the GPS off at that point, and I shut up and let Bro navigate!)
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