We’ve spent the last few days doing some shopping and prepping for Christmas back home and for our upcoming stays in places with colder weather. Big changes ahead: we leave Melbourne on Christmas Day for Bali, then Dubai, and then London. We are going to basically dump most of our suitcase after we leave Dubai and head to London given the differences in weather. We are trying to plan ahead and make sure we have at least one or two days of cold weather clothes to get us through until we can get some replacement clothes. This forced us to join the throngs of Christmas shoppers in the Melbourne Mall madness. Bonus: being summer here, winter clothes were all on clearance. We also picked up our rental car on Saturday that we will have until we leave on 12/25. This enabled us to branch out our exploring a bit, so last night we drove around Port Melbourne to look at Christmas lights and enjoy a fantastic seafood dinner at Pier Port Melbourne.

Wine and Chocolate

Sunday 12/21 has some festive events going on for us back in the States, so in honor of Aunt Nancy’s annual Santa Tea (Atlanta) and the impending arrival of baby Collins (Fort Worth, TX), we decided a celebratory day was called for, and what better way to celebrate than with wine and chocolate? Today we brunched at the Chandon winery, best known for it’s sparkling wines. It is in the beautiful Yarra Valley about an hour from Melbourne, and though it turned rainy today, the vineyards were beautiful, the brunch yummy, and the wines were delicious. We even saw kangaroos dining in the fields! According to the vineyard workers, the ‘roos are actually pests and require them to put nets on their grapes to keep them safe from kangaroo consumption, but to us, they made for a splendid atmosphere.

After brunch we headed over to the Yarra Valley Chocolaterie for a wonderful chocolate tasting! This place was an absolute zoo today, with Christmas chocolate decoration making, Santa and his cacao bean elf in the house 😂😂, and sugared-up kids absolutely everywhere! They grow their own chocolate (cacao) beans in northern Australia (in the Daintree Rainforest), and they have a whole bunch of cool flavors to try. We might have accidentally ordered the five flavors of melted drinking chocolate flight. 😬 By the end of our tasting, I was definitely just as sugared up as any kid here. Rob *might* have suggested I jog home to get rid of some of my sugar hyperactivity, but I couldn’t hear him because I was too busy tearing around the gift shop and shouting with nearby children “Yes! It’s great! Look! There’s SANTA!”

In all, a highly successful day. Thanks for adventuring with us!

P.S. Lest any of you think the freaking bush flies are gone, they are NOT. Even in the rain today… here are some “out takes” from the pictures above, featuring “the fly that would not leave me alone.” 🤬