Every Day is Sunday

We’ve been so lucky to have friends or family join us in South America, Antarctica, Africa, and Asia. We didn’t expect that anybody was going to make the trip to join us for our sixth and final continent. So when Sam emailed and said was coming to meet us in Melbourne we couldn’t have been more excited.

Our best traveling experiences usually occur when we have a local connection. It doesn’t matter if it’s Cape Town, Addis Ababa, or Buenos Aires, we always felt like we got more out of the experience when we had a local showing us the best the city has to offer.

We didn’t have a local connection in Melbourne, but we had the next best thing: a man who has done his research! Sam arrived with guide books, highlighted internet printouts, several pages of handwritten notes, and a strong sense of adventure. We said we’d follow him anywhere.

Even though we’d been wandering the city for four days, we were surprised when Sam arrived and told us that Melbourne is internationally recognized as having some of the best cocktail lounges in the world. In addition to being a general contractor and builder, Sam is also a bartender at Marvin’s and The Gibson, the two hottest bars in Washington DC. He has spent the better part of this year learning the art of craft cocktails, and so he was the perfect guide to lead our tour of Melbourne’s best cocktail lounges.

Our first stop was “1806” named after the year that the word cocktail first appeared in print. Their extensive menu traces cocktails over the last 200 years – you can order a Bittered Sling (the chosen drink of businessmen in 1806) or a 1916 Martini (which can be vodka or gin but always has a lot of vermouth). But the signature drink is the Black Blazer – a mixture of black chocolate and rum which is then ignited and poured from one container to another until completely mixed and piping hot. The bar recently won an award for “best cocktail menu” at an international competition in New Orleans – but they didn’t think they would win and so nobody was there to collect the award!

Our bartender and Sam talked for almost two hours about the art of craft cocktailing, while we sat back and enjoyed the fruits of their conversation.

Our next stop was Madame Brussels where the waiters were wearing short tennis shorts and the gin was flowing like water. When it started to get a little cold on the roofdeck the waiters arrived with a drink, a smile, and warm blankets.

We saved the best for last: the Croft Institute. A Melbourne institution, CI is tucked at the end of a winding Chinatown alley well off the beaten track. We wandered past street art-covered walls and the back entrances of some shady Chinese restaurants before we found the place.

We staked out three stools at the downstairs bar, which was designed to look like a science lab complete with test-tubes and bunsen burners. Sam bonded with the bartenders, traded exotic drink recipes, and scored us a round of free drinks.

It was a great night of catching up with Sam and exploring Melbourne’s cocktail scene. But it was not such a great morning. We had set the alarm for 7 am so we could get an early start on our day, but we couldn’t get Erin to open her eyes long enough to drink her coffee.

It was closer to 10 am when we finally got out of bed and started our epic drive down the Great Ocean Road.