Four seasons in one weekend

Life is full-on at the moment (two jobs, a photo course taking up two evenings each week, a long to do list and long weekends = little time!) But I love it!

Last weekend was K's birthday so we enjoyed a long weekend in Melbourne to celebrate. I joined him and a few work colleagues for post-work drinks in glorious evening sunshine on Friday evening, then we scooted off for dinner in a very swanky restaurant with one of said colleagues and her husband. Then we sped from the restaurant to the Spiegeltent, which was making a guest appearance on Melbourne's South Bank for the Melbourne Festival (kind of like the Edinburgh one but with about 0.1% of the acts). We'd booked to see a band called Husky who turned out to be pretty mediocre, so we gave up the ghost after an hour and spent some time in the bar drinking pints instead!

Saturday morning was a bit lazy and recovery-based, but then the excitement kicked off again as we made our way to the races! Horse racing is massive in Melbourne at this time of year and we'd got tickets for the Caulfield Cup. I'm not quite sure how to describe this experience - basically it was full of p**ed up 22 year olds with tonnes of fake tan, boys with'trendy' hairstyles, girls with huge sunglasses, tiny dresses and big heels, and LOTS of alcohol being consumed. Kind of like what I imagine would happen if Ascot met Eastenders met Hollyoaks - a bizarre lovechild I grant you!

Anyway, once we'd figured out where the hell the racecourse was, had sourced and consumed some food and procured ourselves a bottle of champagne (plastic of course!), placed a bet and even better, found ourselves a seat, we were sorted and settled down to enjoy the action. It was all very silly but good fun and no, we didn't win...

We then got a train back into the city and spent a pleasant evening in various bars in beautiful sunshine and a very nice temperature, watching the world go by, chatting and generally relaxing.

Sunday morning was brunch time - I'd arranged to meet my sort-of-boss in my new job, so we went out with him and his family - always a nice way to get to know people! The weather had turned around completely overnight and the temperature had plummeted from 29 degrees on Sat to about 15 on Sunday - brrr!!!

The lowlight of the weekend was the play we saw on Sun eve - Happy Hour featuring Wendy Houston, who combines 'words and movement' in an apparently 'humourous and challenging' one-woman show about drinking. It was crap. But it provided more evidence of the complete cultural starvation experienced by your average Aussie as the rest of the audience were all hee-hawing and waxing lyrical about how fabulous Wendy's insights were (as K pointed out, her only funny lines were stolen from someone else!)

Anyway, perhaps I'm just not getting it...

So after a busy-whizzy weekend, it was an early flight back to Sydney on Monday morning and straight back to work. I can't believe it's Wednesday evening already!

This weekend will be a quiet one, so will hopefully get time to put some more pics up on here...