Fodor's Travel Talk Forums - Trip Report Wicked Weekend I Melbourne

Myself, along with six girlfriends headed off to Melbourne for a Wicked Long Weekend last month. Gosh we had a great time. I love Melbourne! We headed off on Friday on the 7am flight and had a great flight down. Our car was waiting for us to shepherd us to The Hotel Windsor (found an awesome hot deal on Wotif) which I have to say we were thrilled with. Rooms not ready so we headed out for brunch - and around the corner was Florentine Grill. Whilst we didn't quite realise it was Guy Grossi's Florentine straight away we just loved that it was just like walking into a restaurant in Italy. Wonderful service, lots of fun and a great meal.

We would return. Next we headed to Fitzroy Gardens and to Captain Cook's cottage. We had a wonderful spin in the park for what ended up to be quit a few hours. We headed back to the Hotel to see what our home was going to be for the next 3 nights. We headed out to Chinatown for dinner that night and to be honest it wasn't what we expected. We had the rudest Chinese waiter - well rudest waiter period - but he was so awful it was funny - I'm not sure if you can understand that but we were in stitches over it.

As we were all up very early that day we headed back to The Windsor for a reasonably early night. First off coffee at Florentine Saturday morning and then we headed out for The Lanes where we had another awesome breakfast - gosh Melbourne sure does that well. We really enjoyed wandering through and when we'd had enough we headed over to the Queen Vic markets. I actually found three really nice tops and I was very happy with my purchases and so we headed back to the hotel to get ready for our Wicked evening.

We had a pre dinner meal booked at the State of Grace Restaurant in Collins Street. Seriously Elegantly Eclectic would describe it. Dinner was $25 for one course and $40 for two courses with a glass of wine included - we thought it was excellent value. If you do visit this restaurant please ensure that you discover Fall from Grace - it won't be obvious and you may have to ask but please make sure you do.

Wicked was Wonderful. This was my second time but the first time for the other girls and they truly loved it! Great production.

Sunday we caught a tram to St Kilda where we had a fantastic brunch at Phamish - right opposite the Luna Park mouth. Gosh the food was good and plenty of it.

My DS Mattie - who currently lives in Melbourne - met us for brunch and I headed off with him for a few hours to check out where he was living etc and the girls headed off to explore for a bit. We headed back to the city eventually and readied ourselves for dinner at Lygon Street - Donnini's which was delicious.

A few of the girls partied on after and the rest of us hit the hay. Monday morning was last minute shopping or whatever before our afternoon flight home. Oh but we went back to Florentine for our last breakfast and the waiter who had served us on the Friday remembered all of our coffee/tea/apple juice orders and we were impressed - more great food here - I really love that place. Whilst there the girls presented me with a beautiful gift and a beautiful card with a poem they had written as thanks for my efforts in arranging the weekend. That was a big surprise and I was really thrilled.

On day one I had suggested a 'kitty' which the girls all agreed to immediately - so initially we all chipped in $200 each and I had a separate purse so that when we ate at restaurants or had coffee etc we just paid it all out of the kitty - saved a LOT of hassles and was just too too easy. We would just top up the kitty as required.

The Magnificent Seven had a truly Wicked weekend with LOTS of laughter and beautiful friendship and all in Melbourne - some days are truly diamonds!

Sorry if I waffled on but you know me - I always do - apologies!