Melbourne

Right at the end of semester, late enough that I could conceivably get *all* my work done for the year before I left, I had a conference in Melbourne to attend. And one day in the middle of the year I got an email about cheap flights between Melbourne and Hobart. So I decided that Andy would meet me in Melbourne and together we would go to Tasmania for a purely holiday trip.

While I was in Melbourne, almost all of my time was spent at the conference - from dinner on Sunday night, a meeting all day Monday, welcome drinks that evening, conference followed by Women's Drinks on Tuesday, and then the conference dinner on Wednesday. Thursday I wagged, since Andy had arrived, and we did a little exploring.

I made sure that we were near a Lord of the Fries for lunch. I had a Mini Mark burger and Andy got a chicken parma burger (which he didn't love, actually). The real star of the show was the "French Canadian Fries", aka poutine, aka chips covered in vegan cheese and gravy. 

Then it started raining, which was boo. So we decided to skip seeing a beach (any beach - Andy's request) and instead took the tram to Prahran Market where we sought out the Mister Nice Guy's Bakeshop stall. There were a handful of cupcake varieties, some cinnamon buns, brownies, and raw cheesecakes, and it was legitimately difficult to decide what to get. In the end I got a full sized Chocolate Peanut Butter cupcake, because duh. Andy tried a bite and said it wasn't any better than my cupcakes, which was a nice compliment and probably not true. It was good. Very good. And gluten free - my attempts at GF baking are never that delicious, that's for sure.

We also grabbed a half-dozen baby cupcakes to bring back with us. We were staying with an acquaintance who invited us to have dinner with her, her partner, her son and his partner. Since they are wine people and we would have embarrassed ourselves trying to choose a proper bottle, and since I love cupcakes, this was our contribution to the dinner. These are - vanilla lavender at the top, apple pie in the middle, and "unicorn" at the bottom. 

I think these were generally enjoyed by everyone. I had a Unicorn cupcake, which I suspect contains no real unicorn. It did contain rainbow sprinkles, both on top and in the batter (like Funfetti cake!). And the pink icing tasted like some kind of berry-ish thing. Andy had one of the apple pie cakes. He thought they were overpriced, but he's a bit grinchy sometimes.

Here's another shot of cupcakes from another angle, because cupcakes. 

Friday morning we headed straight to the airport and then had almost a full week to explore Hobart and its surrounds. I'll post about that soon.