Day trip to the peninsula

I hope you all have some tissues handy following that last entry. What always amazed me was that he was a football coach - he must have been the original Joe-Pa.

I wanted to take a minute to thank the dedicated readers of our blog. If this were school, Bing and Annie would get an A+ for participation. Thanks to those of you who keep reading and don't hesitate to leave a comment.

This weekend's trip was a last minute trip. During bootcamp Saturday morning, we learned of several winery and beach 'must-sees' along the southern peninsula. [That's right, "we". I finally got Melissa to go with me. Don't ask her how she enjoyed it ;-)] South of us is the Mornington Peninsula. It has beautiful beaches on both sides - one facing the bay and the other the Tasman Sea. The Melbourne elite all have weekend houses along the many beach towns of the peninsula so it has been on our list of places to visit for some time. The weather outlook for the weekend was spectacular - sunny, blue skies, and high's near 30 - and perhaps the last nice weekend of the summer. It was all the convincing we needed. We rented a car for Sunday and headed south to Mornington.

The trip started by visiting some of the small bay beaches just a few minutes south of us. The picture above is of the very cute Brighton beach. There are small, very colorful shacks along the beach owned by local residents. We headed on to Red Hill Estate for lunch and a taste of the Red Hill wine. The pictures don't do the scenery any justice. While we enjoyed our lunch on the lawn overlooking the vineyard and Phillip Island, a helicopter from the city landed on a large patch of grass not more than 100 meters away. A little rude! We moved on along the Tasman Sea coast and then cut across the peninsula to Serrento and Portsea. It was a fantastic day trip and we look forward to spending a real Melbournian long weekend in Mornington.