Had amazing time exploring regional Victoria. There are still so many amazing landscapes in Victoria I am yet to explore. I've lived here for close to 6 years now and I haven't visited the entire Victoria yet. Well, not that every citizen here is crazy like me going from places to places whenever I have a chance (only when there is a public holiday).
I am not the kind of person who can stay in one place for long. I love adventures and I love going out exploring what nature has to offer. I don't mean doing adrenaline rush activities. Just simple things like visiting the countryside and breathe in that fresh air is more than enough for me but of course after deciding going all the way there, might as well explore what the town has to offer. Every year during Easter, I always do something. Last year, I had to work because I just started my new job so I couldn't go anywhere. The year before, I was in Launceston, Tasmania. The year before that (2 years ago), I was in Adelaide, South Australia and the year before that, I am pretty sure I was in Sydney.
This year, I almost decided to go to interstate as well but there is another holiday coming up in June, so I will go interstate later on. In the meantime, we were brainstorming for places to visit to spend Easter because I don't have my family here and my partner's family is not Christian. So they don't celebrate Easter. After coming up with some ideas, we decided to go to Daylesford for a night there. Another option was to go to Phillip Island but from some friends' opinion, there is really nothing much to do in Phillip Island, especially during public holidays. After asking some Australian friends for more ideas, Daylesford seems to be a more suitable destination. Not only Daylesford is a popular tourist destination, it doesn't close on Easter holidays so it leaves you plenty of things to do. A lot of people visit Hepburn Springs for their spa treatment/baths but during Easter holidays and weekends, they increase the price and it is extremely expensive. It will cost you a good $150++ for spa treatment/baths. I prefer going to the Mornington Peninsula for their hot springs because it is a lot more affordable ($55++ pp).
Too bad we didn't visit Hepburn Springs because it would be such a relaxing place to be during public holidays. Driving out to Daylesford from western suburb is approximately over an hour, close to an hour and a half. We stayed at a shared house with our own room and en suite bathroom and this shared house costed us approximately $185 per night. 'Other places costed more than $200 per night (again, due to Easter holidays). This house felt really cosy and warm. From the outside, it feels like there's not much space inside the house but from just a guess, I'm pretty sure there are at least 6 rooms in the house. It has such a long hallway and there is a family who lives just at the back of the house who owns the accommodation and runs the business. The lady was very welcoming and warm when we arrived. She explained to us the house rules and showed us around the house and every guest was given a set of key to enter the house and room.
From the outside, the house looks really small, doesn't it?? Don't be fooled!!
Carrington House is the name of the accommodation. From the outside, it looks just like a normal house. They have a lot of accommodations similar to this in Daylesford.
The hallway inside the house. Our room was the first one on the left hand side.
Inside the room. There is a small LCD TV just across the bed and you can bring your own DVDs, USBs or you can borrow some DVDs from the living room in the house. There are also some books you can borrow to read during your stay in the accommodation. It may sound boring but I found it pretty enjoyable to read in your room in Daylesford just because during night time, there isn't much to do there and it is way too cold to walk around at night during Autumn time in Daylesford. When we went there, it was 5 degrees Celsius at night!! Who wants to walk around in the middle of the night in that temperature???? I would rather sit in somewhere warm and quiet and read or talk or watch movies or whatever else.
Standard clean bathroom. The only thing I love about this bathroom is, it has a steam function inside the cubicle!!! What a gem!!!
See the seat inside the cubicle?? You can seat and sweat in there and take a shower afterwards just like in a sauna except you can take a shower afterwards on the spot!! It was so cool! The bathroom also has a heater light bulb so it was really warm during autumn/winter. You can take a shower as long as possible without feeling cold!
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There are tea, coffee and biscuits available in the tea room. Guests can serve themselves with unlimited refreshments and listen to music if they want to and read some books like we did. Fresh refrigerated milk is also available in the cabinet. Used cups and tea bags are immediately cleaned by the owner regularly.
Comfortable leather couch for guests to sit down and rewind, especially for us being away from the city. There's newspaper to read too. We had a brief conversation with the friendly owner just in regards to where's the best food in town, places to visit etc. Our accommodation is extremely close to the main town (just about 3 minutes walk to the main street where shops and restaurants are).
When we arrived there, it was a little bit past the afternoon and we were starving. After locking our room and the main door of the house, we darted to the main street to hunt for food. We didn't want to stuff ourselves with too much food just because 3 hours later, it would be dinner time and the locals suggested us to arrive at the restaurant a bit early to avoid waiting time. Daylesford has a few renowned restaurants but we didn't go because 1. They're quite expensive. 2. Easter holidays attract 15% surcharge for everything listed in the menu. The lakehouse restaurant, Kazuki & Mercato are fine dining restaurants and very popular in Daylesford. Apparently according to the locals, some people drive all the way from Melbourne to dine in there. From what I've heard from my colleagues, the Lakehouse restaurant is pretty expensive and my partner told me the accommodation costs $800 per night on Good Friday. It would be a waste of money because I could've used $800 to book a ticket to Bali for a holiday.
We decided to take a walk in the main town for a little bit whilst looking for a place to grab a bite at the same time. There are so many vintage shops around and there is this bookstore that sells literally thousands of books! Some are old collections and second hands so great place to look for antique books. It's called Paradise bookshop.
There is also a vintage market on Easter Saturday but we didn't go because we didn't have time for it so for any antique lover, it is a must visit place!
We came across an Italian restaurant called Koukla which was recommended by one of the owners of Carrington House. Decided to check it out and ordered some pizzas and chill out with a cup of coffee.
#SELFIE!!!
Lovin' my soy cafe latte. There was once when I attended a friend's birthday dinner at an Italian restaurant in the city at +39 Pizzeria, there is this really funny waiter who entertained us for the entire night. He corrected the way we always casually say "Latte" instead of "Caffe Latte" and he did it with a typical Italian tone and he educated us saying that Latte means only milk whereas Caffé Latté means coffee with milk. We probably sounded so dumb for him but hey, if you never embarrass yourself, you never learn new things. So, it's Caffé~~ Laaaaaaaattéé~~ from now on.
I honestly cannot remember which pizza we ordered and when I checked out the menu online, I can't find the menu in the list. You know when you can't remember something but when you look at it it looks familiar? Well, when I look at the menu, nothing looks familiar!!! Sorry :(
Well, I must say I was least impressed with the pizza as it was lacking of ingredients and the whole ingredients weren't in sync. It was just a bit disappointing or maybe we just sucked at choosing the right one at the time.
There's some goat cheese, mushroom and sausages on it. I still can't remember which one that we ordered. See how there's not much ingredient in it? Maybe we have to try something else to have a better judgment.
After that, we decided to check out this bakery which we walked past on the way to Koukla and the bakery was so packed. So we were curious to find out what was so special about this bakery. Due to the day being a Good Friday, many locals went there to buy cross buns for Easter and the bakery also sells pastries such as pies and sausage rolls so I guess not many bakeries are available in town which is why it is packed all the time.
I decided to try their cherry slice and it turned out to be awesome! It was not as rich as vanilla slice and for me, it was just a bit lighter. We shared one among the two of us so that it didn't fill us up easily. We kept checking on our dinner time to make sure we didn't eat too much before that.
After dessert, we went back to our accommodation to rest for awhile. I guess you need it after a seemingly long journey to get there. We made ourselves more cups of tea and watched a bit of TV before heading out again just after 06.30 pm. We decided to go to Daylesford Hotel to have our dinner. They serve more of bar type of food and they do have a bar area and a restaurant area and because we didn't make any reservation (Not that I recall them taking reservation at all), they seated us near the bar area. Although I would of much preferred the restaurant area because they have nice couches to sit on.
They have special menu on display inside and outside of the hotel and yes, they inform you in advance that they're charging 15% extra for the night due to Good Friday as they have to pay their staff double, which is understandable because there are way too many dodgy businesses who don't pay their staff according to the "book" and not many people complain that they don't get paid double. I'm not exactly sure how it works. Maybe bigger and more well established businesses are required to pay their staff double rate during public holidays because they are more likely to get audited and sued? I'm not sure but one thing for sure, if you pay your staff cash in hand, then it's a no brainer that you don't pay your staff double which is even dodgier.
Specials menu for the night... I had salmon - leek pie served with mashed potato, green peas and bisque sauce while my partner had Tarragon Braised chicken leg, black caviar lentils & bacon - mushroom.
Mine was ok, I would say, for me, salmon pie is a bit non-conventional and I'm not used to the texture. When I think of pie, I think of beef pie, steak & mushroom pie etc but salmon pie? Anyways, it was worth the try. I kind of wished the salmon meat was a bit more moist because I found it a bit dry. However, it did go well with the mashed potato because it balances out the lack of moist. The mashed potato was really good!! Well, at least now I know how salmon pie tastes like. Mine to say the least, was good on average. My partner's one was on another level, not in entirely good way. His one was too ordinary. The braised chicken just tasted like any herbal infused chicken leg for me. Maybe except from the black caviar, everything else was fairly ordinary. The price sets you back for $34, you would at least expect a little bit more, unfortunately it was a little disappointing.
We had a look around and it looks like their fish & chips and porterhouse steak were quite popular. We should've ordered those instead and we would probably left feeling happier. Oh well, there is always next time I guess. We decided not to order more dishes or dessert (because we just had one before dinner). It was time for us to walk back to our accommodation and call it a night. The walk was bitterly cold and dark for us but we had to just man it up and darted home quickly.
I took a steam bath and it felt AH-MAZING! Especially after the bitter walk in 5 degrees celsius! The owner also provided a king-sized electric blanket!! I use one at home too because I get cold feet easily so I was uberly excited when I saw that they have an electric blanket!! It does hurt your electricity bill a little bit but for someone like me, I really need it because I can't sleep when I get cold feet :(
I slept so soundly on it and although I did wake up in the middle of the night to turn it off because it got too warm.
Here is the thing, so many people get freaked out with the idea of sleeping on electric blanket. People say all sorts of things like, "I don't want to get electrocuted in my sleep". This one is the most common one that I've heard. Not that it cannot happen (I've never heard of such a case before), but I'm sure if it's not safe to be used, such product will not have succeeded for such a long time. Besides, another way to safely use it is to switch it on a couple of hours before you sleep (put it on level 2 = medium hot) and turn it off just before you go to bed. It will warm up the bed for you before you crawl in and it will guarantee a good night sleep without feeling cold.
Enough on the electric blanket because I can write a whole blog post on electric blanket.
The check out time on the next day is at 10.30 am and we received some advice from one of the owners to get breakfast from this place called Breakfast and Beer. Apparently it is very renowned for their breakfast for tourists and locals. It is also located in the main street of the town. The setting of the restaurant is a bit retro and vintage-ish. Very similar to some cafés in Melbourne metropolitan but there is an extra edge to it.
Oh yes, they have upstairs too.
I ordered Roasted Cumberland Sausage, black pudding & pickled fried egg on sourdough.
It was super yum! Looking at the photo makes me hungry again!! I'm hungry most of the time anyways. The egg was so fresh and perfectly done! Everything was just made from fresh ingredients. I love food in the country. The ingredients are just so fresh because they imported from local farms. The Cumberland sausage was really good too and I love pickled mustard though they kind of stuck in your teeth which make me feel a bit gross and uncomfortable but I am willing to make exception! I'm not much of a fan for black pudding but I do eat it. I know some people find it gross but it is a great source of iron!!
My partner had the crispy pulled pork on ciabatta, sprouts, coleslaw, pickles and sauce dragoncello.
He liked mine better and I agreed too. There's nothing worth criticising about this dish because it is yum in its own way and maybe if you enjoy less meat (minus the sausage) and more greens, you'll like it because it's like a salad dish but my partner is a full on carnivore so he prefers more meat in his dish. Me? I'm not fussed.
After breakfast, we took a walk in town for one last time and we came across this small art gallery. I love visiting art galleries and I am no expert but I just enjoy looking at it and tell myself what kind or artist would I be if I were to be one. It amazes me how a piece of art could set you back a couple of grands and to open your own gallery would also set you back quite some fortune so those artists out there and those who are still trying to prove themselves, let's give them a round of applause.
The art gallery stretches out to display clay art as well.
After walking a bit more and visiting more souvenir shops, we decided to head to Lavandula Swiss Italian Farm not too far from the main town of Daylesford. It is actually not lavender season but we thought after coming all the way out here, why not check out their tourist attractions.
There is an entry fee of $4 per person, not sure about children and overall, there is nothing much to see in there. There's a cafe for refreshment and dessert and there is also a mini farm with chickens and goats living together in harmony. The scenery was very relaxing just like any other countryside.
This is the outdoor seating just outside the café inside the farm. Very family and pet friendly indeed. So many families with their pet just enjoying a breath of fresh air away from polluted air in the city (not that the air in Australia is anywhere close to polluted at all).
I swear this little fellow didn't move away from her territory from the moment we walked in until we left. Her name is Flora, how cuteeeeeeeeee!!!! I wish I could have a dog but due to such a hectic lifestyle, it would be too selfish for me to own a pet and leave it alone for most of the day and week. It's already tough enough to take care of myself and with all my social activities and writing a blog post whenever I have time, there is no time left for raising a pet. You may say how about kids? That's different. When I am ready for it, I will automatically sacrifice certain things in exchange for raising children.
Where the lavender is harvested except you can't see much at the moment.
I sometimes admire my own photos (being sarcastic at the moment). I really admire the beauty of nature and glad that I capture those moments. I guess I have to thank my ex-boyfriend for briefly teaching me how to take a good photo. I'm not great and my camera is pretty ordinary. I'm trying to save up for a better upgrade in the future and I am no expert either. Compared with a lot of amazing professional photographers out there, I'm nothing but you have to agree these photos are beautiful!! :D
and please do leave a comment to advise of things I should improve in my photography skills! Please be nice about it too :) Oh wait, that's a bit contradictory. Ok, just tell me in whichever way just don't be cruel.
Meowwwwww purr purr~~~ I'm not much of a cat person but I enjoying looking at cats and their eyes just portray so much mystery about them. You can never know what a cat is thinking and you can never tell what a cat wants. With dogs, I reckon they are more predictable and they can easily be figured out, especially when you offer them food. Are you a cat or a dog person? Me? I'm a bit of both. I am friendly but cautious at the same time and I enjoy people's company but I can watch movie by myself and yes, I've done it in the past.
The red leaves really assure me that autumn is here. Man it already feels like winter everyday. Forget about autumn. There is no autumn in Melbourne considering how quickly the weather changes from summer to winter. It gets dark just before 6 pm and it gets bright just after 7 am. Way too cold to work out early in the morning and late at night but lots of crazy people at my gym during winter. I would think that people get lazy when winter approaches.
Our next destination was the Chocolate Mill suggested by my colleagues as it is also one of the most popular tourist attractions and they are well known for their hot chocolate drinks.
The Chocolate Mill was not too far from Lavandula farm. If I remembered correctly, just a short 15 mins or less drive to the mill. I've visited quite a few chocolate factories in the countryside and I hardly can tell the difference anymore. Chocolate quality in Australia is overall better than some other countries so that in itself has validated its quality overseas.
As expected, the Chocolate Mill is packed with heaps of tourists. They pretty much sell the standard stuff in all shapes and sizes but that's not why I'm here. I wanted to try the hot chocolate drink. I ordered a regular dark chocolate ($6.50 ish) and it turns out to be quite nice. Not too rich and not too sweet. I don't quite enjoy the hot chocolate from San Churro because for me, it is way too rich and sweet. After a few sips, it starts to get too filling for me. The hot chocolate made from this mill also gave me a sense of individuality, not mass produced by machine. It feels like it is individually processed and crafted and when you sit there and drink it, you feel close to the source of it rather than "Oh yea, I just got this from the shop near my house". Don't get me wrong, it is also a commercialised chocolate but not as much as big brand out there like Lindt, Max Brenner, San Churro etc. We actually had to drive all the way out straight to the mill to get a taste of it. Everything just tastes better in the countryside I suppose.
I know, they gave us a very interesting mug with interesting shape that you don't know which side you should sip it from.
Before it got too dark, we decided to drive back to the main town for lunch before driving back to Melbourne. We decided to have our lunch at Frangos & Frangos Jimmy's Bar near that Koukla restaurant (literally next door and also owned by Frangos & Frangos).
Well, not really lunch to be honest because we only ordered 2 entrées and I swear those ones are not available online because I just checked their menu online (because I can't remember on top of my head what those dishes are called). AGAIN!
This one was standard cured meat (different meat) and the bread was nothing too special either. After sampling that hot chocolate, I can barely fit anything else into my stomach.
This one is a lot better. The special sauce was so delicious and again, I can't remember what sauce was it. It tastes a bit like Indian curry ish but not quite there. Completely fusion style. The mussels just went so well with the sauce and you can't help but to dip those bread into the sauce.
This restaurant has an outdoor seating as well and during autumn time, the red leaves decorating the restaurant looks so romantic and beautiful! Perfect place for private functions.
See what I mean? :)
We arrived back in Melbourne just before 5 pm. Before it gets too dark and I hate sitting in a car in the middle of nowhere at night time because it just feels a bit creepy and unsafe.
I've got another blog post coming up for my countryside trip part II so stay tuned and if you have any suggestion, comment or whatever else, please do not hesitate to leave a comment below because I would like to know what do you think I should do to improve the content of my blog :)
Merci for reading everyone and ciao! Yes, they are two different languages I know :)
