Tess and I headed down on Friday afternoon and spent the evening watching Ryan play basketball and Maggie do gymnastics. The Jamieson's Friday evenings are clearly very similar to ours just with different sports!
On Saturday we headed into the City and met up with cousin Tom, aka Big Tom, who moved there 3 weeks ago for work. He took us on a little tour of the city and we ended up in a very cool cafe for brunch.
Eleanor, Becky, Ruby, Tess, Sarah
We headed back into the city and met up with the other mums and daughters at our hotel before going to a restaurant called Father's Office for lunch. Bear in mind that by this time it was Tess' and my 3rd meal for the day!
After lunch we did a little bit of shopping which Melbourne is very well known for. In fact I found Melbourne and Singapore very similar in that all people seem to do is eat and shop. We had all set ourselves the task of finding dresses for the girls formal at the end of this year. The girls are all 12 and it is an incredibly difficult age to shop for as the kids clothes tend to be a bit babyish but the adult clothes are often inappropriate. In one department store I picked up 15 dresses and poor Tess had to try all of them all but we did quite well and came away with 1 formal dress and 1 for Christmas Day.
Angela, Bec, Trudie, Kate, Lenka, Sarah, Tess, Eleanor, Ruby, Becky
It didn't take long for us to feel a little shopped out so we headed back to the hotel and the roof top pool for a quick swim. What felt like 5 minutes after lunch we went for dinner to Gazi which is a Greek restaurant owned by George Colombaris, an Australian chef made famous by the television series MasterChef. The food was fantastic and the girls did a great job of trying everything.
Sarah, Ruby, Becky, Tess, Eleanor
By this time everyone was feeling a little exhausted so we lined the girls up with a (possibly slightly inappropriate) movie in one of our rooms and went downstairs to the hotel bar for a nightcap and a natter away from all the elephant ears that had dogged us during the day!
Eleanor, Becky, Ruby, Tess and Sarah with silly hair
Sunday morning and the obvious thing to do was go out for breakfast followed by another swim in the pool before we had to check out. Although we had sorted formal dresses the previous day we decided we needed to sort shoes too so that all the outfits were done. Once again we headed to the large shopping mall and spent a good 2 hours looking for shoes. We quickly gave up on the kids section and tried the adults section where we all had luck. Tess and I currently have the same shoe size so I bought her shoes on the condition that I am allowed to borrow them!
At about 12pm the mums started talking about going for lunch but the girls insisted they weren't hungry and wanted to get their toenails done instead. It was very sweet seeing all of them lined up in a row having their pedicures and they were all very happy with the end results. We decided to go to Lygon Street for lunch which is a real foodie street lined with cafes selling mostly amazing Italian food. Although it was a bit of a walk from the centre of town we all needed to walk off a few calories and it felt good to finally get to a more "authentic" part of Melbourne rather than being in an impersonal shopping centre. We found a lovely restaurant and had some truly fabulous freshly made pasta and perhaps a couple of bottles of prosecco - when in Italy (or pretending to be).....................
A brisk walk back to the hotel and we were just in time for the taxi to take us to the airport. A really lovely weekend with lots of laugh, ridiculous amounts of food and some lovely memories.
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