Friday, December 9th, 2005

Sea seemed to be feeling a bit better today. Did a bit of emergency web work in the morning and posted a pic of the baby to show off to City.

We decided to go pick up a new hard drive for Gabriele's computer (the one I've been working on since it's been set up.) We went to a couple of places nearby, then did a quick tour of the city in the Datsun (pictured below.) We checked out King St. to see if really was as "grotty" as it was made out to be. It probably is at night.. Chinatown was kind of interesting and the main street through the CBD (forget the name) with all the trees was really nice. We got to see where the parks and gardens are, and I especially liked the Albert Park with the lake and the golf course. Unfortunately, I didn't get pics of any of this...

Ye Olde Datsun! The exact same age as Sea. ;)

When we came back, I sat outside and updated the travel journal as depicted here:

Ahh.. Glorious sun!

Then Gabriele came home with Jasper, her other daughter Zoe's boy. He's about 3 years old and was quite shy at first, then decided to throw or "chuck a wobbly." The plan was that he'd go for a swim with us, but I guess he wasn't up for that. He had to be taken to the library to calm down. Sea & I decided to try out the pool anyway, but it was a bit cold; so Sea went inside to work on the other computer, and I sunbathed for a while. The sun is quite a bit more intense here than I'm used to, so when I started to bake, I decided to try the pool once more. After I got out, I found out that Jasper now wanted to swim so he and Euan (Sea's dad) went in the pool.

Afterwards, we took Jasper home where we met Zoe, baby Bridget (not sure the spelling on that yet) and Paul. We had a glass of wine (and some Melbourne Bitters) and chatted a bit, then checked out their back garden. I took a picture of their neighbour's giant cacti which were huge and very impressive. I also took a photo of one of the purply-blue jacaranda trees that you see everywhere here. Apparently they're nearly done and are usually more blue. Still very pretty though..

The Gigantic Mutant Cacti Invasion!

Jacaranda: not such a good example but they are really very nice.

Then we took a drive along the sea port and St. Kilda which is really nice, but probably very expensive to live. I should have probably taken pictures of this, too but was a bit tipsy after the wine and beers and too busy gawking at everything to be on the ball. I'll try to get some when we go down to the beach one of these days... Mostly it's all boxy modern homes with ceiling-to-floor windows and yuppie-type bars. Looks like a great place for cycling though...

We drove back along Chapel St. where a lot of the shopping and younger, "trendier" places are found, including the Jam Factory. It seemed pretty chaotic, but of course it was Friday evening. When we got home we had dinner with pavlovas for dessert - something I've never had before - but basically like meringues.

Sea and I debated going out to some event on King St. We weren't too sure about how to get back late at night, though apparently there's a "Night Rider" service; but we were also worried about making ourselves more sick. I guess we were probably still a bit jetlagged because we passed out and we probably should have called the girl who invited us, because she called at around 3am looking for us. Oops!

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