Bondi Vet

Tall, blonde mcdreamy style hair, big buff shoulders, Aussie accent, veterinarian. I think all ladies out there should be aware of Chris Brown, Bondi vet, probably the hottest guy ever! His cuddling animals through out the show definitely doesn't hurt his appeal! click here to check him out

For Granny

From the first moment I walked into Gypsys, a restaurant cafe about a 20 minute walk from our house, I thought of Granny. This is the type of place she would love. Small and homey with whitewalls and decorated with a collection of antiques, cultural pieces, fresh flowers, and wood tables. The staff refer to themselves as Gypsys and dress in a casual Gypsy inspired attire. Serving just breakfast and lunch they change their menu frequently dependant on what is fresh and available and what their current theme is. Csaba and I went there for lunch the first time a couple weeks ago. He had a bagel with creme fraiche and smoked salmon with caper and onions. I had figs stuff with goat cheese wrapped in prosciutto served on micro greens with a sweet vinaigrette, yummy! Today I went in for breakfast. I sat on their lovely little patio that is built around a large shade tree out front. In one corner they have a great little child size wooden kitchen set for kids to play with while their moms have lunch or coffee. Right now they are going for a Tahitian theme. The ladies in charge were very excited about making their cafe a tropical escape and were quite pleased to hear they had succeeded. Light reggae music played in the background and the inside was decorated with palm fronds and flowers and a fun brightly colored large paper umbrella by the cash register. I ate the coconut pancakes topped with grilled bananas and served with coconut ice cream to be used instead of syrup or butter. The presentation was amazing! The ice cream was served in half a small coconut and the pancakes were served layered with the grilled banana on a deep square light wood plate with fresh banana leaves on the bottom. On a toothpick in the top half a small lime and a tropical flower. Beautiful!!!! And yummy. I enjoyed the pancakes with two cappuccinos and read my book for a little bit. I'm very disappointed i didn't have my camera for this excursion so I could post pictures for you all. I think I'm going to have to give in and buy an inexpensive one to use for the duration of the trip. I will definitely take some pictures of Gypsys to share with everyone before I leave. I'm sure those of you who know my Granny would agree that she would feel right at home there.

Australian Rules Football

A few weeks ago Csaba and I were checking out Docklands, the area where we had had dinner for Valentines, and decided to stop by the AFL arena to see if there was a game that night. Lucky us there was and with tickets only $20 we decided to check it out. What a weird sport. Nothing like American football except that there are goal posts, AFL is played on a round field with players in tank tops and little shorts. The sport semi resembles rugby but the also punt the ball with their hand similar to an underhand volleyball serve. It was fun though confusing. I really liked the HUGE team pom poms at each end of the field. I was a little disappointed with the snacks. No nachos, no churros, no hot dogs. They did have meat pies. Weird. Here are some pictures from the game....

Weather

Seems that I pretty much just only caught the end of summer here, it is officially fall. We got lots of rain this weekend which is great for the area since they have been in serious drought conditions for years. It is very unpredictable however, for instance last Thursday Csaba and I decided we wanted to go downtown for the day, back to the Gallery so Csaba could see some of that and just to walk around have some drinks and dinner. When we left the house at 10:45 am it was drizzling so we got dressed for wet cold weather. By the time we were done eating breakfast and walking around checking things out and going to the camera repair shop (where they gave me the bad news) we were boiling hot and my feet hurt from walking so far in my boots! We ended up taking the train back home changing into shorts and tee shirts and flip flops and heading back out! The rest of the day was really nice out we have a great time at a European Bier pub downtown trying different beers and talking about old music that was playing and movies. Both of us are obsessed with imdb, (the Internet movie database) and so we had to make a list of things we were talking about to check when we got home. I was correct when I thought it was Keanu Reeves in Paula Abdul's Rush Rush video, but wrong that Kelly Preston was in The Saint, Turns out it was Elizabeth Shue. From there we walked down to the Southbank area that has a lot of restaurants for dinner. Something both of us have found very alarming about this country is that restaurants won't let you take your left overs home! We had decided to be decadent and shared some lobster but only got about half way through before we were way too full but had to surrender the remainder to the restaurants garbage. Very sad. We hada good time however and happily headed home.

Devastation...

My camera lens is permanently damaged and can't be fixed! I think it is still under warranty so hopefully when I get home I can get it replaced but with 2 more months to go on the trip, including 3 away trips to Barossa valley wine region, Sydney, and a possible trip to Fiji or Bali, I RRRRRRRRRRRREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAALLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY
need a camera! Csaba has his but it is a much larger professional camera. Quite the dilemma. I may just have to buy a cheaper one to use the rest of the trip.

Shows!!!!

Csaba and I have been fortunate enough to see a number of productions while we have been here in Melbourne. There is the Arts Centre downtown and also a number of arena's in the area. So far we have gone to the stage play Moonlight and Magnolias, a funny period piece about the writing process for the movie "Gone With the Wind". It was really fun to see a play since I haven't gone to the theatre in quite awhile. The play had great humor and we had a really good time. With the unpredictable weather we've been having lately we weren't quite prepared for it to be raining when we came out of the theatre so we had to run back to the train station.
Later that week we went to Complexion contemporary ballet company. I was really excited to see this one. Desmond Richardson, formerly of the Alvin Ailey dance company, is one of the dancers and also founders of the company. The show was in 3 acts, the first was a mock "rehearsal" and then "performance" showing the dancers preparing pieces and then performing the pieces as a whole. The second Act included a number of pieces each one an individual work. One of my favorites was Desmond Richardson's solo performed with a chair and a rose. The third act was a collection of U2 songs. I really enjoyed the last part it was very upbeat with a lot of interesting choreography. We had decided this night to save some time and not go out to dinner before hand. We quickly realized this was a mistake by the end of the first act we were famished. Thankfully there were some concessions in the theatre and we got a sushi roll and a yummy sandwich. After the show was done we went to EQ for dinner. While we were eating we noticed that some of the dancers from the show came in for dinner too! Unfortunately another lady noticed as well and bombarded them with praise. Poor people just wanted to get some dinner after an exhausting show and she wouldn't leave them along for like 10 min! Csaba had what he thought was a hilarious idea and wanted to go over and tell them he thought it was "just alright". I told him i wouldn't speak to him for the next few days if he did it. Thankfully he didn't. Over all it was a great night although i do have to say i was going a little nuts because i wore one of my new dresses and i didn't realize the bra i was wearing was going to be popping out the whole time! I kept pulling on it all night long. I guess I'll have to re-evaluate what undergarments I wear with that one!
Last Tuesday we took a once in a life time chance and saw Eric Clapton live. What a great show he is very good at what he does! the only things I would have changed were the concert being held where people could stand up and dance and secondly I would have liked for him to talk a bit more about himself or the music. Truthfully the only words out of his mouth all night were thank you and the names of his band members. I'm glad we went though.
This weekend we are going to see Wicked at the regent theatre downtown and then Monday we are seeing Firebird and other legends in classical ballet back at the Arts Centre! Very exciting!!!

2 weeks behind!

For those who have been checking I'm sorry I have fallen so behind!!!I've gotten lazy with my time on-line lately and haven't been writing in here. Let's see what I have missed. 2 Sundays ago we went with the family for a day trip out to Phillip island to go see some animals! There is a wildlife park up there where you can feed and pet Wallabies and Kangaroos and also see lots of other animals like Koala's. It was fun although I was a little nervous at first to feed the Kangaroos but I knew I had too so finally by the end i got down there. There were very nice they are quite used to people. Animal pictures After we left the animal park we headed to the area where the penguins live. You don't often see them during the day though because they are out swimming around so that was a bit of a bust. We did go to a very cool beach with big rock formations that you could walk across out into the water. There were a bunch of guys fishing off of them and we found a very cool HUGE tide pool, I'm not even sure it counts as a tide pool since it was the size of a swimming pool and twice as deep. We really wanted to swim in it but didn't have our bathing suits. It was very cool however. It reminded me of where the Little Mermaid kept all of her stuff. After we were done sight seeing we went to a fish and chips shop and got a ridiculous amount of food. Truth be told I had never had Fish and Chips before, it was pretty good. Phillip Island Pictures
The next night I decided I would make dinner. Csaba and I are trying to cook for everyone at least once a week as a thank you for letting us stay with them rent free. The first time we marinated some steak and grilled it and I made a pasta salad with some corn, red peppers, and zucchini that i roasted topped off with feta. This time around I decided I wanted to make a favorite recipe from home called chicken in a diaper. It's a creamy chicken mixture wrapped in Pillsbury cresent dough. Not terribly hard to make and really tasty. This hit a snag however when shopping for ingrediants we realized they don't sell Pillsubry pre-made dough or anything like it. Aftera lot of though i ended up making them with pre made puff pastry dough rolled out which was different but worked well. We also served corn on the cob and a yummy fruit salad (the only thing I would let Csaba do- I don't cook well with others, just ask him about making a pie this last week). The family really liked it which was great. Now I need to figure out what to make this next week......