We had a 25-hour leave pass
The Poolboy and I have a wedding anniversary coming up this week, which passes by pretty much un-marked most years. This year, however, I planned a bit of a surprise. I lined up my cousin to babysit overnight and booked a “mystery romance package” through lastminute.com. The “mystery hotel” turned out to be The Stamford Plaza in Melbourne CBD.
I managed to keep it all a secret from The Poolboy, and one of the highlights of the whole experience was the look on his face when, after spending Saturday morning doing the supermarket shopping, taxi-ing kids to dancing classes, unsuccessfully shopping for summer shoes for The Impossible Princess, making lunch and tidying up, I told him he had 20 minutes to pack his bag because we were going away.
“Yeah, right,” he said.
My cousin nodded her head in agreement. “You are.”
His expression was priceless.
They weren’t wrong when they called it the romance package. We entered the dimly lit room to the sounds of a romantic CD, the room was awash in rose petals and there was champagne on ice, a plate of canapes and some chocolate-dipped strawberries. And altogether this had the effect of making us laugh. Which perhaps wasn’t quite the desired result.
“And you didn’t think to ask them why?” I mused.
However, 100 Mile Cafe was a great choice. Its philosophy is to use produce from the “backyard”- in this case, Victoria. Where an ingredient is not grown or produced in Victoria, the nearest Australian alternative using best practice is sourced. Each menu item is given an average mileage based on how far all the ingredients have travelled (and obviously, each is under 100 miles).
Walking down to dinner, I stopped to admire the walkway between the Myer Lonsdale store and Melbourne Central.
On Sunday morning we strolled around the city, looked at some of the lovely shops, saw the Gordon Bennett exhibition at NGV Australia at Fed Square and enjoyed a few of these:
And the best part of the whole experience…25 hours on our own without the kids. Don’t get me wrong. We love and adore our gorgeous girls and are thankful everyday that they are a part of our lives. But this was the first time in four years that we’ve spent the night without them.
And it was good.
