I love visiting Melbourne and was long overdue for a visit (about 8 years) and Kelly has never been so it was with great anticipation that we headed down for a long weekend. We jumped the flying Kangaroo rented a car and we were in Brunswick St. Fitzroy just before mid-day. Brunswick St. has a ton of good cafes (in fact Melbourne definitely has the European cafe culture down) so we went for a walk and found one we liked. As well as cafes there are blocks of book, clothing and home ware type shops in Fitzroy and all are a little bit funky, definitely not your usual mall fare.
After a couple hours in Fitzroy we headed toward the bay and our hotel in St Kilda. Kelly got the recommendation for this hotel from a magazine called Family Circle, yet it was as far away from a Family Circle type environment as you could find. 
It was one of those super cool boutique jobs, with a bar and restaurant downstairs, all the hallway lighting was red and directly over our bed was a huge photo of Colonel Sanders with the normal KFC replaced by WMD – a comment about the pervasiveness of American culture in Australia I think (?). The place was small, clean, close to trams but really loud at night – the Hotel Tolarno gets 2 ½ stars from 5.
Friday night we caught up with Franc & Di Renzi. Franc is a friend of mine from college and for me a trip to Melbourne would never be the same without catching Franc and Di… many, many good times with them in Melbourne. Having local friends paid off – we went to a bar that was not only down some rubbish strewn alley but was actually built into the cavity between two multi-storey office buildings – it was very cool … if you ever visit Melbourne don’t ask me where it is because I couldn’t explain it to you even if I wasn’t sworn to secrecy! We went to the Melbourne version of Longrain (there is a Sydney version) for dinner – great food.
Saturday the party did get started right – breakfast in Acland St, St Kilda. Acland St has about ten great pastry shops - vanilla slices of exceptional quality (I want to control the hyperbole here because we are talking vanilla slices, not hamburgers or meat pies which could then be described as “to die for”).
After loading up on the food we headed for the shopping …and possibly the people watching … capital of Australia, Chapel St. South Yarra. We spent a solid four hours there and I was happy with the relatively minor damage to the bank account… I think Kelly treated this more as a reconisance trip for the next visit.
Saturday night we went over to Richmond for dinner at Franc and Di’s place and met their daughter Sabrina. Kelly and Sabrina got on like a house on fire and along with swapping more “dirt” on me with Franc and Di this made Kelly's night.
The food wasn't done yet - Sunday morning we drove to Carlton to have breakfast at a Melbourne institution, Brunetti's. The place is a crazy Italian cafe that was packed - 12,000 cups of coffee is the record day. We ate breakfast and left with bags full of cannoli.
A stroll along the Yarra and then back to Sydney.
- Mark P.S. http://www.brunetti.com.au ***** from Kelly, just don't try and get there during a fun run for the childrens hospital.
