Lovely Outliers

Welcome to Australia! We arrived late at night in Melbourne and our friendly Uber driver shuttled us along the (distinctly North American-style) highways and streets to get Gemma and I to our lovely South Yarra Airbnb home for the week.

Most of our time was spent at the conference , but we did have some time to explore.

Our first stop: the beach (of course)!It was a bit cool for swimming and only a few brave tourists were braving the water. However it was a lovely day for a walk:And a perfect day for some wine.Melbourne is a really nice city. I would say it is very similar to Vancouver – nice, cool, clean, hip, with (pricy but excellent) coffee, and epic brunch options. In our short time, we became regulars at the Lucky Penny café, because it was the most delicious (and might have had one or two cute employees 😛 ).This was “Magic”, an Aussie-style coffee (steamed milk poured over a double ristretto, which from what I understand is a more pretentious version of an espresso shot. Essentially this tastes a lot like a flat white). You can see our server even made a note to “make it extra good.” It lived up to its name!The Lucky penny wasn’t the only coffee game in town, and I was sure to get my fill of excellent coffee at a number of excellent establishments. Since we were already traveling together and living together, Gemma and I decided to make it official: our love for minimalist and beautiful jewelry!To celebrate, we drank more coffee.We occasionally left the coffee shop to see other things. Like giant trees in large parks.And enjoying the spring blooms:And wander the quiet streets.Melbourne had an infinitely livable and pleasant vibe and I really enjoyed spending time in this city with this gal (although next time I will get a spare key for the airbnb!)!