Last full day in St Kilda and so far have spent it on the beach in our favourite bar (Bathers Bar on West Beach) sat on sun loungers on a deck drinking cold cider and watching kite surfers. We even have wifi here. David has just received an email from work telling him today is National Stress Awareness Day. Good look with that one everybody although we go have some concerns with our waiter who really could try harder in bringing the cold ciders quicker.
The beaches and bars are full today with people enjoying the public holiday and all this for a horse race!! We went into the bar to watch the race. It's billed the race that stops the nation but we can confirm that most of Melbourne was too busy sunbathing and barbecuing to care about the race.
This evening as our last night in St Kilda we went for the local delicacies we've been eying up all week: pie and chips for David and the Parma for Yvonne. The pie lived up Aussie pie standards. The Parma was quite something. We knew it was big but it well Aussie-sized. Very similar to a Teesside parmo which we now think isn't as original as they make out. It's a chicken schnitzel but we don't know where they get the chickens from. We wondered if it was secretly an emu as it was the size of the plate. There were chips and salad with it but you couldn't see them as the Parma was that big. Off the Sydney tomorrow. We are optimistically hoping it will be cheaper than Melbourne. Probably not as its a big city. So far in 8 days of Oz we have already spent more than we did in 25 days of Vietnam and we've been trying to be sensible. There's no two ways about it: down under is top end.