Sunday, December 18th, 2005

My throat was much worse today. Slept in a bit and Sea brought me some water with goldenseal when I woke up. When I finally was mobile, I found out everybody was going out to get the Christmas tree (which I already knew) and to Dimmey's, an area called Carlton and basically some of the cheaper shopping areas. So I decided to go along despite feeling under the weather.

Dimmey's was kind of like a more empty (and easier to navigate) Honest Ed's. We ended up buying a shirt for Sea there since the menswear wasn't too bad. But the ladies' stuff was kind of lacking I found.. Although jeans were very cheap. No idea how good they were though.. Bridge Rd. is where all the outlet stores are - we drove around it, but didn't stop. Lots of stuff there.

The front of Dimmey's.

Inside Dimmey's.

Cute little place around the corner - I just had to take a pic.

We did a bit of a tour around Fitzroy Gardens and along Spring Rd. past the government buildings. I'd like to get pics of these places at some point. Then we went to Carlton where all the old Italian sidewalk cafes are. It's quite nice there. One guy was showing off his Lamboughini.

Every "hoon's" dream.

We went to Brunetti's to check out all the cakes and cookies and have a coffee with some little pastries. Sea & I tried a couple of mini-canolis which weren't bad. Their profitoroles looked amazing - as did almost everything there. Pity the cappuccinos weren't very hot...

Sea & Euan at Brunetti's.

Then we walked up to Lygon St. where we found this nice little store with lots of great gift things. I picked up something for the baby here. We wandered up the street and got some ice-cream cones from New Zealand Natural (Euan's treat. :) We finally made a stop at Borders to see if they had a book we need there and then visited a friend of the family, Lynn, who works in a nearby clothing shop before getting back in the car and heading off to get our Christmas tree.

We settled on a fairly good one for $30 from this terrific guy down behind Malvern Central where you can buy your firewood. I was told it was a family-run business and it was close to our place, so it was perfect. We brought it home, put it up and had lunch. I decided to have a nap around 4:30 since I was feeling so "crook" and Sea joined me. We were out until almost 6 when we were awoken for dinner.

Over dinner we watched some silly music-related game show called "Spicks and Specks (the Christmas edition)" upon Kate's recommendation. Unfortunately, the humour was really lost on us all. But I did kind of like the part where they sang the words of a garbled speech by George Bush to some Christmas carol. (Every other word was "um".)

The latter part of the evening was spent updating the travelogue and watching "The Last Castle" (which apparently Euan didn't like either) and was highlighted by getting to try Gabby's famous sausage rolls that she makes for Christmas every year. They are YUMMY!

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