After an awful 6 months or so of health problems and medical tests, and with my health seemingly getting better, we decided a quick break to Melbourne was in order. We managed to snag decent priced flights even though it was school holiday and tickets to see Studio Ghibli’s Musical director Joe Hasaishi conduct the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra playing music from various Studio Ghibli songs.

We arrived in the late afternoon on a Tuesday and caught the extremely convenient Sky Bus in to the city.

It was good to be back in Melbourne, as it had been a while since we were last there.

We checked in to our hotel (Frasers Suites in the CBD) and decided dinner and drinks were in order. We couldn’t resist going to one of our old favourite haunts – The Lounge – and we met up with Perth friends (now living in Melbourne) Danni and Dale.

The menu at The Lounge didn’t really appeal to me (mostly Burgers etc) so we just had a drink and some “tide me over chips”. Then we left to get some dumplings for dinner at a place across the street. After dinner we headed to another old favourite – Choo Choo’s located in the Cookie building. We managed to snag a booth but were disappointed to find that they had removed the doors of the booths. We had a couple of drinks and caught up on the gossip 😜 Actually we talked about all our health problems mostly, which was nice. ( just as an aside: if you know anyone going through any kind of health struggles – send them a message, ask how they are going, check in with them every now and again just to see if they are ok- trust me being sick for a long time is a pretty lonely business and I was quite shocked at how most (not all – some people were great) treated me. It was almost like “don’t mention the war” (to quote Basil Fawlty). It kind of made me feel like people didn’t believe that I was actually unwell. ) But anyway, back to Melbourne.

After Choo Choo’s we made a brief stop at Beer Deluxe in Federation Square before bidding adieu to Danni and Dale and heading back to our hotel via an obligatory stop at Stalactites for some late night chips.