There's gold in them there hills.

Hey;

On a whim, we decided to head out of town this weekend to the Foto Biennale (Foto is a fancy word for photography).

The Lovely Samantha took the bit by the horns. She packed bags, booked us into the Best Western hotel lastminute.com could find and loaded the ipod with Dr Seus audio books - all while Bodhi and I kept alive our Saturday morning tradition of stuffing our faces with home made pancakes. By midday we were passing a road sign welcoming us to the prospecting town of Ballarat.

It was here that we discovered a part of Australia that we’d like to retire to…if only it didn’t freeze over during winter. Beautiful…no…stunning…period houses, a sun kissed shimmering lake and some of the nicest country town architecture I’ve ever seen. And, here’s the clincher, it’s Affordable, with a capital A.

Passed the time seeing as many of the photo exhibitions as Bodhi could patiently sit through and making several long sweeping circuits of lake Wendouree and bordering suburbia. It really is a beautiful town. Sam’s already made plans for a return voyage to raid the remaining junk-tique stores she didn’t get the time to pillage.

Three weeks exactly till we leave for India. It can't come soon enough.

see ya,

Minas.

Adelaide

Hey Gang;

The Lovely Samantha and I took ourselves off to Sunny Adelaide for a weekend away. Trouble with Adelaide though is that it's a little bit mundane. Much like the US and its quantitative easing, you could throw bucket loads of money at Adelaide and it still wouldn't solve the problem. Nice hotel - check, retail therapy - check, slap up dinner - check, die of boredom - check. Even the movie we paid for failed to do anything but...you guessed it..bore us (Water for Elephants - don't bother).

While in town we took the opportunity to visit the Saatchi exhibition of modern art. I guess it's only fitting though that, in keeping with the broader theme of the weekend, the "art" was completely under whelming.

On the plus side, the weather was fantastic.

see ya,
Minas.