coffee, hot cocoa or tea.. or me! :)

one of the many words commonly associated with Melbourne is COFFEE. the city is dubbed the coffee capital of Australia, and the Melbournians (Melbournites?) are very proud of their coffee culture. there's zero difficulty in getting good coffee, there's a cafe at every other corner of the city (and quite affordable if you earn AUD)(an average cup costs abt AUD4)(in fact, pretty much everything in Australia is  affordable if you earn the currency. i envy their spending power!).

i used to love coffee but i've cut down my consumption by almost 95%, because i suspect it's the culprit causing my insomnia.. i love you, sleep! and since i had to refrain from coffee, my next best indulgent drink is hot chocolate. yum yum nevertheless. but the smell of coffee in the morning is surely one of the best things in the world.

my first cup of drink in Melbourne: a cup of rich, smooth hot chocolate, served with a side of winter cold. ahhhh...
(koko black @collins street)

the hubby loves his coffee. he drinks enough for the both of us, haha! and yet, he can fall asleep within 5 minutes of his head hitting the pillow. every single night. life's so unfair right? 

this coffee was one of the few cups i had (i think this was cappucino but that doesn't explain the choco powder. but i don't rber ordering mocha here. heh.) and it absolutely delicious. and for AUD5, it comes with a huge muffin, the cheapest and best coffee deal we've had. (cafe la venice @st kilda road)

(L) my first cup of coffee in Melbourne: a cup of Mocha on the snowy Lake Mountain

(R) tea and me. we were having scones, and i naturally opted for a cup of Earl Grey to go with those.

this man was selling coffee out of his VW Combi. so cute (the van, not the dude).

(L) Brunetti is said to serve one of Melbourne best coffee. i can't really be a judge of that, but i've gotta say, their dessert counter made me weak at the knees. everything looked so pretty and delicious and just sinfully sweet. i had a hard time narrowing down my dessert choice to that lemon tart (which tasted as good if not better than it looks *drools) because we had just came from a very filling pasta lunch *burp. (brunetti @faraday st)
(R) hot chocolate and a marshallow. it wasn't mine thou. wish it was. :D

there's no coffee in this pic here, just a minced beef pie from a random cafe where we had lunch.. but check the background -- that plastic bottle labeled SOLO contains some very delicious carbonated lemon juice. me likey! i wonder if it's sold here in Msia.

does it look like we were having a restaurant dinner? would you be surprised if i told you that i whipped this whole meal up in my hotel room? :) yeah i did. the motel we stayed at in Apollo Bay has kitchen facilities in the room, so we just got our food supply from a nearby supermarket (and a previous stop we made earlier in the day) for dinner and breakfast the next day.

i bought a small knob of butter to cook the steak (which was pre-marinated), and mixed herbs to go with everything. i got half a dozen eggs which i cooked three ways: sunny side up (pictured here), scrambled egg, egg + baked beans. the rocket leaves were sold by weight, so we just have to get as much as we need and we had fresh vege each meal. i also bought a bottle of napolitana sauce which is typically used as pasta sauce but which i used as dip (in place of chilli sauce and ketchup). that bottle (next to the wine glass) lasted us the whole trip. just nice!

since this is a beverage-related post, i should point out that we got the bottle of wine for like AUD7. it tasted fine (to my untrained tongue) and it kept me nicely tipsy that evening. :)