This morning we headed off to a cafe that Chris had found online. It was called Sonido, a South American place providing mainly Columbian and Venezuelan cuisine. The room was filled with old posters in Spanish and wooden boxes and other momentos. It created a great atmosphere. SAnd the music came from an old record player in the corner of the room. They had a large range of old south american records. I had a flat white and an arepas filled with cheese. The arepas was not a finely ground as some of the flours used here, so it had it’s own distinctive taste and feel to it. I would certainly recommend visiting it.

During the morning we hung around in the city, close to where our lunch venue was, and sat at the tram spot for an hour reading, after wandering around the South Bank area. We had to go past the Crown Casino on the way but never felt like popping in. As it got closer to 1pm at the tram stop, more people arrived. And then at 1pm or lunch venue itself arrived – the Colonial Tramcar Restaurant. Here it is below arriving to collect us.

There were 3 trams in all for lunch, catering for up to 36 persons per tram.

So the trams moved around for a couple of hours across through a part of the city, to St Kilda and so on. I just love the architecture around St Kilda, as well as the yachts out on the water.

The weather was just superb for the day’s journey.

So for the lunch, we had an entree (both Chris and I went for the Duck Terrine, in the mains I had the Beef and Chris had the chicken. I stuck with Shiraz throughout whilst Chris started with  Sauvignon Blanc. We then followed up with a shared cheese plate, and I went on to have a cup of tea and a followup glass of Baileys. Chris had coffee. The ride was juts delightful and I would recommend it too.

We then headed home to rest up for the evening’s entertainment. So at 5.20pm we headed off for the walk to “Rare” a steakhouse restaurant. There are 3 in the city. We arrived just before 6pm (our booking time) and sat down to enjoy the atmosphere. It was quite a polished venue with lots and lots of wine.

We started the evening with a bottle of sparkling water and moved to a Rochford Grenache Rose, which was quite sweet but went down very well with the shared entrees of wild mushroom arancini and salt and pepper calamari. We then moved onto the main meal,m for myself of eye fillet medium rare (as Neil Perry says all steak should be cooked to medium rare), with mashed potato and a shared greek salad and coleslaw. I was extremely pleased to see that they had not americanised and removed the “cole” from “coleslaw”. We matched the main meal with a bottle of 2014 Karawatta Cabernet Sauvignon Langhorn Creek. The pepper and spices of the wine worked well with the steaks.

The mashed potato of the main came out looking like a peeled potato. It had a great look to it. Chris and I surmised with was basted with butter, or milk, before serving. So I asked the waiter how this was done, and he went to ask the kitchen staff. They said it was with butter, lots and lots of butter. Another thing to try when I get home.

For dessert, Chris had a trio of sorbets whilst I had vanilla icecream and chocolate sauce. The sauce was sold as “mars bar chocolate” it it very much tasted like the outer layer and caramel from a Mars Bar. An interesting thing that occurred during the main course was one waiter brought over a small container of toothpicks (I’d already grabbed one from the bar) and left it on our table – which I moved to the other side of the table; then about 10 minutes later, our main waitress brought over another one and left it on our table. I asked the waitress whether they thought we had really bad teeth or why this was done. She explained that as a way of seeing how we are going at the table but without disturbing the customers, they will put one of these containers on the table part way thrugh the meal. If the meal is fine, then we don;’t get disturbed, but if it isn’t then they will learn about that. It’s such a good system.

Rare provided a very enjoyable meal and atmosphere and was well worth the visit. However I decided after having walked 11.5 kilometres during the day, that I would catch a taxi back to the Nunnery. Chris wasn’t interested, he wanted to walk, so I caught my cab and got back to charge my phone and start to read a book. I had gotten through about 3 chapters of the book by the time he arrived, but he was happy to walk and I was happy to taxi. So all ended well. Then it was off to bed for us both.