Hen's Party

I'm not well versed when it comes to Hen's Parties so this was going to be a bit a challenge for me (especially as it would be the second time I've met the "hen"!). We raced around on Saturday afternoon trying to make it to Circular Quay for 3:30pm to meet Donna and catch the ferry to Manly - we made it with about 2mins to spare!

The first part of the Hen's Party was at the Manly Wharf Hotel which has a great deck and view. We met up with the "Hen" Kirsty (who Jo used to work with at IBM) and Fiona (another IBM-er) and got a round of drinks in. Over the next few hours, the other invitees arrived, photos were taken (until Donna had to go to a RSVP event in the city that she was hosting/photographing) and plans were discussed. We moved onto the dinner destination and place of the arranged 'entertainment'. Now, we had all been speculating as to what the 'entertainment' would be and as it was a hen's party, a stripper seemed the most popular guess.

L-R: Fiona, Donna, Me, Kirsty, Jo

As we approached 'Artichoke' (they cafe for dinner) things became a bit clearer. It's an ART cafe, when we arrived and went upstairs there was a big cosy chair in the corner, pencils on the table, paper attached to drawing boards....oh god. It's a nude model.


I actually found the whole thing quite relaxing, and even if I do say so myself my sketches (Alex, the model, did 4 poses in a 40min session) were pretty darn good! Hehehehe.

You can't escape a feather boa when Donna is around

After dinner and some drinks we moved on to "In Situ" a really nice little cocktail bar in the backstreets of Manly for some cocktails (well, Fiona had Cosmopolitans, I had a coke). The place had a really nice atmosphere and is far removed from the awful Manly pubs frequented by drunken yobbos so I'll have to remember it for the next time I find myself in Manly on a Saturday night.

Looking forward now to Kirsty's wedding on the 11th April.

Easter Long Weekend

Another long weekend, another dreadful weekend of weather.

We took off on Friday to Newcastle to spend the weekend with Ryan and Tanya. Ryan had a bad crash on his scooter last week (which saw him undergo surgery and have metal pins put in his arm) so we thought we'd give him some company and sympathy. His arm is about 8 times it's normal size and he can't really go out and about too much.

Due to the predicted crappy weather, we spent most of the weekend relaxing inside with good home cooked food, wine and Sex and the City DVDs.

Jo had not discovered the pure genius that are the 6 seasons of Sex and the City but this weekend we managed to watch all of Season 1, season 5 and half of season 6. We've got some back-tracking to do through seasons 2 - 4 before we find out what exactly does happen with 'Big' and of course before the movie comes out later this year.

We did manage to squeeze in some exercise though - Tanya is on a self-inflicted bootcamp regime that saw us up and out early on Sunday for a 6km run. Now, Jo has been doing bootcamp twice a week for the last 10 weeks while I have not. I was quite impressed with my effort of around 36mins for the full 6kms without a break.

Zhanna - too cute

I just wanted to add these pictures of Zhanna because they are so gorgeous!!

Melbourne

We decided a while ago to take a long weekend and head down to Melbourne with Ryan and Tanya. The time had come and we were up early to catch our flight at 8am. We got to Melbourne and met up with Ryan and Tan at the apartment. We'd booked into the Medina apartments on Flinders Street which turned out to be fantastic! The place was brand new with 2 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms and plenty of space and in a great location.

Jo and Tanya getting ready for a night out

We kicked off as we intended with a trip to St Kilda for lunch. Ryan had been telling us about this place called 'Claypot' for ages and we decided that was the go. We ordered a tapas style entree with bread, dips and antipasto type dishes follwed by a whole flathead (cajun style) and a gumbo claypot. Mmmmm, the food was fantastic as was the service. We thoroughly enjoyed the whole experience and it set us up for the day.

The weather in Melbourne was beautiful and we had to head back to the apartment to get ready for the night. We arranged to meet some of Tanya's friends in the city around 4:30 who took us to the Marrakesh Bar. There was a $5 cover charge however they did $1 Corona's. Yes, $1 Corona's!!!! You can imagine how the afternoon went! After we poured ourselves out of the bar we walked to Fifteen (of Jamie Oliver type fame) for dinner where we also met up with Ryan and Tanya's sister Nalufa.

Jo and Ryan - cute couple!

We were surprised to find that all the wine on the menu was pricey as with nothing under $65!! However, lubricated by the $1 Corona (and probably averaging out the savings) we ordered 2 bottles to start. The service and food at Fifteen was excellent. I had the buffalo mozzarella salad to start and the slow cooked pork belly (4 hours to cook!) for main. We were all too full (of Corona most likely) for dessert which in hindsight was a shame.

The next morning started off fairly slow as you can imagine but we picked up pace and head to Prahan and Chapel Street for some shopping. We stumbled upon an Industrie sale where I picked up some shorts for $15 and a top for $5. Jo did the same buying 2 pairs of shorts and about 6 tops all for $5 each! In the evening on a recommendation from a Chef friend we tried a tapas place called Movida for dinner. It was conveniently very close to our apartment just of Flinders Street and the food was wonderful (well, mine was!). The dishes were very different and the flavours beautiful. Some of the dishes that Tanya and Ryan had were a bit hit and miss but overall if was a good experience. We finished off the night with a walk down Southbank, a drink watching a band and then a dip into Crowne Casino and the Roulette tables (no visit is complete without it!)

Ryan and I between courses at Movida

On Sunday we went to catch up with Nalufa in Richmond and ended up doing a photo shoot with her two beautiful kids William and Jade.

William, Lufa and Jade in quintessential family shot

After a very busy weekend we headed home very full and committing for a miniumum two week detox!