Mission Accomplished

Jon and I vacationed in Australia in 2011 and I always felt a nagging sense that we missed out on something. I am here today to let you know that nagging sense is completely gone now that we’ve seen…

Roo1Roo2

That’s right, not just one, but TWO kangaroos in the wild. I can’t explain how exciting this was for me. I am not sure why, but it was just fantastic and now I feel like I’m really having an Aussie experience.

Backing up a bit, Jon and I took a trip this past weekend to the Mornington Peninsula. Jon rented a car and managed to do a superb job of driving us around on the wrong side of the road on the wrong side of the car all weekend.

Jon Driving

It took about an hour to drive to Mornington, the town we stayed in. We found a place to grab lunch in town and decided to head to Arthur’s Seat where I’d read we’d have a decent chance of seeing wildlife. We hiked the Arthur’s Seat circuit which allowed us to see these amazing views…

View from Albert's Seat

Against our better judgement, we ventured in this dark forest Scary Forest

to see what we could see. And we saw NOTHING. Don’t get me wrong, it was beautiful,

ASHike

but NO roos, NO koalas, and thankfully no snakes. As I dejectedly walked back to the car, Jon got my attention and pointed out the best thing ever – a kangaroo in the wild! And then we realized there was another roo. Absolutely fantastic.

We’d already won the weekend, but decided to stay around anyway and checked into our lodging to celebrate. We stayed at the Mornington Bed and Breakfast which was fantastic. The view was even better than advertised and while the window between the bathroom and the bedroom was a little odd, putting down the curtain solved that problem.

BandBView BandBview2

We decided to check out God’s Kitchen, a restaurant and bar in a former church, a strange combination that somehow worked. We had a couple of good meat burgers for dinner and a couple of Sierra Nevadas to wash them down before settling in to watch whatever random movie was on TV.

The next day we enjoyed a home cooked breakie at the b&b and headed out along the coast to explore. We ended up in Point Nepean National Park where we hiked all the way out to the point with fantastic views along the way there and back.

Point Nepean Views

Point Neapan View
PointNeapanView2Point Neapan Jon Beach

Since we ended up hiking much more than originally planned, we decided we deserved a big lunch at the lovely Portsea Hotel followed by some scenic driving on the way to a pit stop at the Red Hill Brewery where we ran into a fellow wahoo – go figure!

The Portsea Hotel
The Portsea Hotel

That evening we decided to get Chinese food and found that the restaurant was BYO. We weren’t sure if that just meant wine or whatever. Fortunately, it was whatever, so we ventured up the street to buy beer and headed back for delicious Chinese food. I was about to order beef with chilli sauce. Luckily the waitress suggested I get rainbow beef instead. It turned out to be crispy beef which my Bowie pals will know well from Grace’s Fortune. So good! After that we decided to watch Young Guns from the b&b’s DVD collection – shockingly, it doesn’t hold up.

The next day we made our way back to the big city with Jon basically a total expert at driving on the wrong side now.

Date Night

With Sara’s leisure / hobo time winding down, she decided it was time to cash in the wonderful going away gift that her Book Club ladies gave her.  Luckily, she decided to bring me along! We were headed to the CBD to eat at a Middle Eastern restaurant named Maha. So, we hopped onto a tram and rode into the city.

Tram ussie
Tram ussie

First, we stopped at the Bull and Bear Pub for a few warm up drinks. The pub reminded Sara of the Regal Beagle of Three’s Company fame and I couldn’t disagree.  After finishing a pint and a pot (8 oz),  we headed over to Maha for our dinner.  Note, I find it un-American that a pot of beer costs exactly half of what a pint costs.  Where is my volume discount?

After some arriving at the storefront, which was down a small alley, Sara was able to figure out how to get in the door.  I tried to go in the service entrance.  They presented us with the below menu, which had 4 choices of what do for dinner.   We chose the 4 course “Spice Journey Soufra”.  Here’s the menu.

To quote Fletch, "If this were at all legible, you could read it."
To quote Fletch, “If this were at all legible, you could read it.”
The Maha sign outside
The Maha sign outside

 

 

 

 

 

 

We opted to pair our food with some Lebanese beers and enjoyed them, my pale ale by 961 Beer was spiced using Lebanese spices and was very interesting.  Sara got their Red ale.

The food was delightful and managed to fill me up and then some.  I’ll leave you to read about the various things we ate by looking at their web site or squinting really hard and looking at the image above.

After our wonderous meal, we decided to talk a bit of a walk to shake off our food coma.  I took Sara to the Crown Casino and we lost $3 playing the pokies (slots).  I showed her the shocking number of roulette tables in this casino (literally at at least 50 and more than half of their table games).  Sadly there are no craps tables here.  On our way to the tram,  we spotted a great possibility for our next date night – I know this much is TRUE.

Huh huh huh hu-uh huh
Huh huh huh hu-uh huh