Brisvegas and 6 hours in Melbourne

I have recently returned from a week in Brisbane where I attended a Crime Prevention through Environmental Design workshop. I learnt so much during the three days, too much in fact and I think it will be a challenge to implement all that I learnt. The week in Brisbane also gave me a chance to catch up with some friends and family, which was an added bonus.

I took a leave day and was able to spend the weekend with my friend Jenny. We met in Mongolia, she is an AYAD as well. Jenny lives in Highgate Hill, in Brisbane's West End. Jenny lives a short walk from Boundary Street, a lively strip with lots of cafes, bars and funky shops. I had a glorious day on Friday thumbing through all the racks at all the op shops and vintage stores in the area. They were literally everywhere. And unlike Darwin where the clothes are all relatively new (i.e. late 90's) there was plenty of vintage and retro clothing. I spent a grand total of $32 and I got two dresses and three shirts. Boundary Street also had a number of vegetarian and vegan cafes which was also handy as I was about half way through my vegan challenge.

My flight back to Darwin was cancelled, so I had to go home VIA MELBOURNE, was a six hour lay over, none-the-less. I quickly texted Mel to see if she could pick me up during my time in Melbourne, luckily she could, and even more appropriately, Margo was coming over for Sunday roast, so I got to catch up with not one friend, but two.

The very well behaved Oscar was keeping us all entertained.

Oscar, Al and Mel chilling out after Sunday roast.

Margo providing details of her day at the Mooney Valley Community Day.

Having breakfast with Luke and J-dogg on Boundary St.

Whilst in Brisbane I also got to catch up with my high school buddy, Luke. Although we live in different states, have different jobs and haven't seen each other in the last two year, its like nothing has changed. He still knows how to stir me up better than anyone!

The River Steel Drum Band, performing at the West Brisbane Markets.

A weekend is not complete unless there is a visit to the markets. On Saturday I signed up to the Brisbane City Bikes and J-dogg and I rode to all our destinations on Saturday, including the West End markets. At the markets be bought THE BEST ROMA TOMATOES IN THE WORLD. They were absolutely to die for. I was eating them like apples. The taste was sensational. An old Italian guy was selling them (organic as well) and wanted to know why I wasn't buying more of them for my boyfriend.

We also tried lots of vegan foods. Some more tasty than others. One of the foods on the good list, was Cold Pressed Coffee (see below). It was basically soy iced coffee in a beer bottle (and yes it did look like I was walking around the markets at 10am drinking beer)

Soy Cold Pressed Coffee: one of the better vegan treats we had that morning

Catching up with Cousin Callan.

On Friday night Jenny and I caught up with my Cousin Callan for tasty Indian food and then we went to a local pub where a live band was strumming some funky blues rhythms. It is sort of hard to describe the joy I feel when listening to original live music. It just makes me so happy. And there and then I made a promise to myself to seek out more live music in Darwin and not listen to crappy DJ's because it is infinitely a better experience.