Two days ago, the halfway point on our trip snuck by without notice. We can't believe we only have another four weeks to go. Melbourne is the perfect midway stop. It is an exciting place to spend five days busy from morning to night before we head to laid back New Zealand. And having a lovely apartment, not in the heart of the CBD, gives us the break and slight normalcy to our days that you can start to miss when traveling for so long. We get to do laundry, pay bills and catch up on ironing and reading. Sounds boring and un-vacation like but this stuff has to fit in when you are gone for so long.
Seems we are back in our city sort of routine, up and out early and go, go going all day long straight through to an early dinner before heading home by 8:00 or so. We thought we would maybe do tickets to a show here, but only Elton John piqued our interest and tickets to the sold-out show were going for $1,200 AUD. I know we don't like him that much.
Today started with a carton and a trip to the Post Office for the third package home. We've not bought much exciting but still too much to keep carrying and keep under 23 kilos each. And we will need to buy some more clothes because, if you add up what we have permanently stained and the sweaters we sent home from Sydney when it was so hot we could never imagine needing them, the chilly New Zealand temps are now fast approaching.
We skipped and missed our morning flat whites today to get to the NGV ( National Gallery of Victoria) at a reasonable time.
The big new exhibit that opened last night is Ai Weiwei and Warhol. The museum was crowded so we opted to see only the permanent collection, and will try to see the Weiwei/Warhol another day or when it comes to Pittsburgh, the only other venue. Along with great architecture and Australian art, there was a virtual reality special exhibit. Once you donned the goggles and headphones, it was like a 'trip' through a Pop Art world, quite impressive.
The sunny morning had turned a bit cloudy and cool as we headed for our lunch reservation at Maha, a high recommendation from our Sydney friends. It's a kinda sorta Middle Eastern fusion cuisine and Steve, of course, suggested we go for the six course DeGu menu. At least he didn't insist on a bottle of wine too. The food was interesting, delicious and beautifully presented. For those of you not into the food porn portions of our blog, you can cut out now. For those of you who are, enjoy these photos and descriptions because after we leave Melbourne, I am betting it will be a bit more pedestrian.
1st course- crystal bay prawns, almond garlic Lancôme soup with green apples and orange blossom.
2nd course- tea smoked duck salad with corn bread crisps, hazelnuts, greens, weeds and black garlic mayo
3rd course- warm cardamom cured salmon, asparagus, olive oil and yogurt
4th course- Waygu brisket with coarse black pepper, spiced pumpkin, sumac powder and pickled carrot
5th course- 12 hour slow roasted lamb shoulder, garlic, cumin, coriander, smashed roasted radish, almond and mint. + cracked wheat pilaf with barberries, currants and orange + salad
NOTE: Remember I said there were a lot of Christmas parties??? Well, due to that, our service was a bit slow between courses. So, to make it up they brought us an extra dish in course 5 of lamb dumplings which were great but definitely put us over the edge to exploding.
NOTE 2: it was a real toss up if this exquisite slow cooked lamb shoulder was up to the one Andrea cooked us in Sydney....Steve says Andrea's was much superior!
6th course- pomegranate brûlée, almond sponge cake, Tunisian brick, mint gel
Are you ready to head to the bathroom and purge? We were. Good thing after that two and a half hour lunch we had missed the rain showers and could walk to our next stop, the ACMI ( Australian Center for Moving Images -ie The Film & TV Museum). I wasn't sure how much interest it would be, but the location was on our way home and well, we love movies. Turns out it was a great stop. It is associated with the University film school and had an incredible exhibit of 13 large screens simultaneously showing short films, all starring Kate Blanchett.
Thing was, each character was so different in age, hair, accent and sometimes even gender that unless you had read what the exhibit was, you would never know. We loved her in Blue Jasmine and recently in the new Todd Haynes movie, Carol, but this really puts her in a category with the best. What a face, what a talent!
At the museum, they also have a cinema. Today was the opening of the Shorts by the Graduate students, so we hopped in. I think we were the only non -students there to watch about seven shorts. Like any shorts program, some were bad, some okay and a couple quite good. And when the lights went on, we recognized many of the actors sitting in the audience. At this point we were ready to head home as any more eating until tomorrow was out of the question.
We had a cocktail and chat with our hosts before they headed out to a Xmas party, a perfect way to end another great day.
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