During the four days that I spent in Melbourne, I went out drinking three times. It was quite a bit. Heh. Above you see the bar at the Irish pub close to work on the Southbank.

Two of those three times were spent pub-crawling with my Melbourne colleague Rob a.k.a champion host! Among the places that we went around the CBD area were Beer Brass with a great view looking across the Yarra …

and the Young and Jackson with a great view of Flinders Street Station (again! yeah I can’t get enough of it).

During one of our pit stops for food in between the drinking, we stumbled into this restaurant called “Noodle Kingdom” on Russell Street – the Chinese words translate literally to “Every Family Happy”. Or as Rob called it, “the dodgy Chinese restaurant”.

I was feeling like noodles that day and the sign on the windows say they do Shanghai dumplings so that sold me. The lamb stew noodles that I had was very good but the dumplings were meh. The dumpling skin could have been softer and they should have contained a bit more hot stock when you bite into them.

One of the better places that Rob took Phil and I to was the Automatic within the Crown Casino complex. Or did we stumble into it? I can’t remember.

Drinks to start dinner with: Rob and I had Hoegaarden and Phil had mint julep.

And then we had 3 pizzas and more drinks.

After that, we saw some cakes near the front counter and felt tempted …

but we weren’t girls, so Rob got us little chocolates instead. Hahah!

The final night of drinking was done at the company Christmas do at Albert Park.

There were free flowing drinks and finger food. A lot of both were consumed, a lot of conversations were had. And a lot of team bonding (natch) was made. Heh. I also met a fellow employee who has been reading my blog for a while – Mirebella. What are the odds?! Phil said that I was “internet famous”.

The rest of the night was a blur. As testament to that, here are two blurry shots. First up, the company provided a bus ride back into the CBD. It was a loud and raucous affair as you can imagine.

And here’s one of Rob posing with a very long pink Hummer limousine outside Crown Casino.

We had some McD and decided to call it a night. The next afternoon we’d be flying home to Perth. Our flight was delayed for 3 hours and Phil and I was bored shitless at the airport. But hey, this whole trip more than makes up for it.