Botanical Gardens and Food & Wine Fest - Mar 1

Summary: Botanical Gardens, Food & Wine Fest, goodbye Melbourne

First off, please feel free to add any comments. Am I missing anything you're wondering about? Your comments will post as soon as I am back online. This morning, we went over to South Gate (sorry I’ve been calling it South Bank – it is the south bank of the Yarra and there is a South Bank there, but the district is more properly called South Gate) for breakfast. We saw that they were setting up for the Wine tasting of the Melbourne Food & Wine fest, but it was early. We walked up the Yarra to the Botanical Gardens – really pretty and they had a kid’s garden with jungle trails and things to do. We got back to Fed Square and caught the food portion of the Food & Wine Fest – it was sponsored by the meat folks and their slogan and materials just left me smiling: “RED MEAT – We were meant to eat it”. Not sure how much security they would need to hire to protect an event with that slogan in San Francisco, but the food was awesome – lamb, chicken, beef, pork, scallops, salmon …more than red meat prepared by the best restaurants in Melbourne. The photos give you a sense of the scene along the river and the live music was great (swing & jazz). We never did get to the wine part. Oh well, I got to a bit of wine in the past couple weeks before Melbourne.

I had meant to get to St Kilda but the weather was cold & rainy at times and I had meant to get back to that Italian part of town on Lygon. Either way, Melbourne has been great - anywhere would be great with Aneta, but Melbourne clearly is a world class city.

Next: I am posting way early because our friend will visit (then we stay with him and his family in Sydney), then we pack up and drop off Aneta tomorrow midday, Alex and I are off to Lakes Entrance or so in East Gippsland, then via Canberra to Sydney, so I am not sure when I will post again.