Hello friends and fams, today I would like to write about our weekend in Marysville, as you may have guessed from the not-so-elusive (rather, allusive) title. This past weekend was our belated birthday weekend which was postponed both because of our lack of planning and because our actual birthdays aligned nicely with the summer holiday of the local school kids. So, we reserved our "Romantic Weekend Getaway", or whatever, at The Cumberland Hotel and Day Spa. We rented a tiny automatic Toyota from Hertz and set out Saturday morning at about 11:30 (we're bad at leaving at a reasonable time when it's not required) driving east of the city.Marysville is about 150 or so km (100 miles) northeast of Melbourne and, taking the accidental circuitous route, took us about 2.5 hours to get there. This included lunch at an odd bee-themed restaurant in Healsville and, as mentioned, an unintentional detour to a place that I will deem the middle of freaking nowhere. As a side note and possible excuse, the road signs in Australia leave quite something to be desired from the unfamiliar traveler; it is reminiscent of New Jersey, god forbid you ever end up there. Anyway, our tour of Marysville, once we arrived, consisted of a hasty drive down "the strip" in search of our hotel which is right smack in the middle of town on "the road". It's one of those towns. Very cute to visit, no idea why people live there. We actually didn't even patronize the cute little shops lining the road because it was cold and we were tired. Instead we, in classic Kangie style, took a nap until that obnoxious ball of fire in the sky (that is barely doing anything for us at this point) went away.
We awoke and stumbled out to the large gathering room full of couches from a bygone era and a nice but oddly placed fireplace. We read our books until dinner at 7:00 then sauntered into the dining room only feet away to be greeted with a four-course dinner that was included with our hotel package. It was awesome. The food was good and my favorite part was that we got a menu with no prices. Normally I would think this was awful, but since the meal was included with our stay, we could order whatever we wanted. So, instead of picking the cheapest, healthiest, non-meat item without rosemary in it, I got to just pick the healthiest, non-meat items without rosemary in them. Excellent. And it was four courses so we got a bowl of soup, a tiny appetizer, a main dish and a dessert. My favorite kind of meal. I always want the sampler platter at a restaurant and that's basically what this was.
Then, once again in classic lame style, we retired to our room to watch Sandra and Keanu tear up the streets of LA in Speed before retiring for the night. An excellent film, by the way.
We awoke to rain, which did not manage to affect the pleasantness of our massages at the day spa. I've never had a professional massage before and aside from the oddity of having a stranger's hands on my bod with my boyfriend two feet away, it was very nice. I found it a bit disconcerting to be that...close...to a strange woman and I also found that even though it was a pleasant temperature in the room, I was nonetheless freezing. There's no way around that, I guess. Unless Kane and the two masseuse ladies were dripping sweat and all but melting into piles of goo, I would have probably been cold. Oh well, it was still nice - and I was covered in blankets, so I wasn't really that cold. The new age music, dim lights, and having Kane in the same room made it really relaxing and an overall nice experience.
After we were adequately massaged and checked out of our hotel, we decided to visit the Healsville Animal Sanctuary on our way back. Let me be clear that I am not a zoo person. I won't go to the zoo. I don't want to see animals forced into cages on display out of their natural habitat and climate. So, I was wary about this "sanctuary", because, really, you could just call a zoo a sanctuary if you wanted to. But everyone at the hotel was raving about it, so we decided to go. And it was great! This sanctuary rehabilitates injured animals and repopulates endangered species. And they have big old habitats for animals that you wouldn't imagine would mind it (birds, reptiles, extremely lazy kangaroos, etc.). It's very open and actually quite large and has a lot to see. One thing I did like, not for the obvious reasons, is that we didn't get to see all the animals that they have. We couldn't see the Tasmanian Devil or the echidnas and the wombat was all curled up and just looked like a pig. I didn't mind though because I really felt like it meant that the animals could hide or do what they wanted and weren't forced to be on display for us all day every day.
So, the pictures above are from our wanderings at this park. Left to right top to bottom-ish we have: the most sarcastic bird I've ever seen in the top left corner. This bird was staring at me with the most New York "you lookin at me?" expression ever. Kane has no idea what I'm talking about and probably neither do you, but it cracked me up. Next to the right are giant grey birds that are about my height when they raise their heads. They were cool and huge. Upper right corner is a nearly extinct type of wallaby - adorable with huge long tail. Center row has a dingo (yep, it just looks like a dog) and two cuddling kangaroos on the left, an inexhaustibly cute koala in the Whoopie Goldberg slot (Hollywood Squares, anyone?) and a giant pelican-type bird and a pretty parrot on the right. The parrots actually were in Marysville (not at the sanctuary) and are scattered throughout urban and suburban Victoria (and maybe the rest of Aus? Don't really know). They're so pretty and neat! The bottom row shows an emu which is a large ostrich-like bird that makes a very loud rumbling honk noise deep in its throat. I'm not sure what it was trying to say to us, but it sounded freaking weird coming from something that wasn't James Earl Jones. Next to Mr. Emu we have weird-beaked bird, a couple bats hanging upside down, and another adorable wallaby (slightly less endangered). If you click the picture, it will enlarge it for you so you can see the pictures more clearly, if you want.
We saw more than that, but those were the good pictures. If we ever get the chance to go by there again, we'll definitely take it. There was enough stuff there to occupy a whole day. Not just with the exhibits but there are also events every hour or so where you can meet the keeper of each of the animals or watch them be fed, etc. etc. Very well done place.
Oh yeah, and there was a platypus display. But since they only come out when it's dark and quiet, you can't get a good picture of them in the dim, dank cave area that they built for them. I was surprised at how small they were - I thought (probably just from Warner Brothers cartoons) that they were about the size of a medium-sized dog - maybe 40 pounds or so. The ones at this place were probably 3 pounds. They were tiny! There were a bunch only about the size of my hand, but I think those were the babies. The others weren't much bigger, maybe the size of a medium-sized turtle. I can't imagine them weighing more than 10 pounds or so. Those might have just been small ones, but they were cute and I was surprised nonetheless.
You will note from my lack of descriptive names and information that I don't read the labels at museums and sanctuaries. Actually, on this visit, we were short on time because we had to return the rental car by 5pm, but I'm typically not a label-reader anyway. Except in grocery stores. Just ask Kane.
So that was our weekend. It was fun and certainly was worthy of a birthday celebration. Thanks to mom and dad for providing the monetary support for the massages - much appreciated! High five to anyone who actually read this whole thing - I tend to get a bit wordy (literally).
