Things I dislike

Hi there

In life, there are two things that I have always hated with a passion:  soup and scarves!

On my last day in Melbourne when the temperature dropped down to 12c from 30c, and the wind was worse than in Wellington, and the rain was non-stop thundering down, and I was plodding through the Queen Victoria Market with sore feet and cold bones,  I gave in to both of my dislikes.

I bought a scarf.  I got myself a bowl of soup.

Ooohhhh, yes, the scarf was so so so cuddly, and the soup gave my insides a deliciously warm feeling .  Suddenly my world was better in a nice rainbows and roses sort of way.

Have I been converted?  Who knows? It's hard to break a 50 decade aversion.  Tune in on the next really cold Wellington day.  The story continues ...

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below: another pic of Queen Victoria Night Market:

Food in Melbourne

Hi there

My five readers are well aware that over the past year and a half I did nothing but mope around the house feeling sorry for myself, hating that I had a bad heel, and couldn't walk.  And I ate a lot.

Then last month I went to the dentist, had a crown put in,  and could only eat mush for a month.  So when I hit Melbourne a fortnight ago, I was rarin' to go.  Both footwise and foodwise.

I loved the Queen Victoria market.  It is so huge, both indoors and outdoors.  I purposely picked a hotel that was almost on the QV Market's doorstep just to be near the figs!  I love fresh figs.  They're sold in farmers' markets up the top of the north island but down here in Wellington, sigh, we never ever see them.

I shouted myself to a buffet lunch at the upmarket Observatory Restaurant at the Crown Casino Tower.  I was in the act of demolishing my twelfth oyster direct-from-the-shell when I bit down on a piece of shell.  I was petrified I might have destroyed my new $1650 tooth.  But, crisis avoided.

At one restaurant - Othellos -  I had to wait an hour and a half for my order.  If I hadn't been trudging around Melbourne for hours already, I would have walked out, like so many other diners did.  I was just pleased to rest my feet.  On that day, there had been a marathon-y sort of race  right through the heart of the city with thousands upon thousands upon thousands of people participating.  I guess Othello's hadn't figured on so many people thronging the restaurants.  The burger I finally got was nothing to write home about.  I feel my order shouldn't have been accepted in the first place.

Below dessert choices from the Conservatory Restaurant buffet.

Below the Conservatory Buffet, Crown Towers

Some of the inside space at Queen Victoria Market.

My meal at Othellos Restaurant Melbourne

Below:  a do-it-yourself pancake machine in restaurant at my hotel in Melbourne.

A pancake machine?  Really?  I pressed a button and a pancake came out!  This reminded me of the food replicators on the sf tv programmes "Red Dwarf" or "Star Trek".      Is it, perhaps, what classy chefs are really doing out back in their kitchens, and we pay through the nose for something called, maybe, "Pancake a la Posh".....?