20 April 2013

An afternoon in the valley


Long weekends come thick and fast in Victoria at the start of the year and a few weeks ago we had not three but four days off over Easter.

The Sparky and I left our decision to go away a bit too late, particularly given that we needed to find somewhere that would allow the dogs. A nice, quiet time at home though was in the end just what was needed.

As I sat on my laptop on Friday catching up on bloggy stuff and drafting a few new posts I came across this fabulous post over at Not Quite Nigella about a nice sounding place just around the corner.

Easter, chocolate ... seemed like pretty good timing to me.

So Saturday I packed The Sparky into the car and off we went for a drive to Yarra Glen.


 
The view when we got there was pretty good too.


The menu was almost overwhelming but we ended up deciding to share a pumpkin pizza and a ... lemon meringue tart ... phew, I almost forgot what we'd had! It was all delicious though and we cleared both plates quickly. I could have gone for another coffee but the place was pumping ... Easter Saturday, chocolate, free Easter egg hunt? Yeah, timing was great ... so I decided not to join the crowd again.



It was a lot of fun and we will definitely be back, just maybe on a quieter day!

Oh, and just in case you were thinking that we walked away empty handed ...


A selection of thank you gifts ...


  
... and an indulgent treat for me.


Thank you Lorraine, we had a wonderful day out and will definitely be back again!

12 comments:

  1. Oh wow, look at all those interesting chocolate flavours! Do want. Perhaps you could do a review of all those chocolates... :D

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    1. Yes, I've already told The Sparky I need to go back and get some to try for myself. The best I could come up with while trying the two that I did get for me was "oh, wow, this is gooood and so worth it!", which made me think I should perhaps leave the chocolate reviews to the experts :)

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  2. YAY! I'm so glad that you had a chance to visit! :D It's a great place and yes I can only imagine how crazy busy it was on Easter Saturday! BTW I have chicken on my shopping list for next week to make that chicken dish! ;)

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    1. I told The Sparky straight away that we had lunch plans for Saturday and that was it ... I know from past experience if I had put it on the 'to do' list it would have sat there for months. I'm trying hard to stop reading and drooling jealously this year and to actually start doing some of the great things I've been reading about, so far so good :)

      Oooh, I look forward to hearing how it goes. I'm going to play with it a little next time to see if I can get a bit more crunch from it.

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  3. Ohhh you visited the Yarra Valley :) I Have been meaning to go one weekend with my partner because I really want to try out the Chocolaterie and all the wineries hehe ~

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    1. It really is a gorgeous area, you should definitely do it ... it's not too far for a day trip (or two or three), if a weekend away is too hard to set aside.

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  4. The Yarra Valley is my 2nd favourite place after the Mornington Peninsula. And the chocolate factory is up there on my fave places there :P

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    1. It's definitely gone to the top of my list. Now that I have my Saturday's basically back I think the Peninsula will be getting a hearing too.

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  5. Oooh interesting chocolate flavours! I want. You have to let us know which ones are good. :)

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    1. Well I can definitely vouch for the two at the bottom that I got for us, although the dark chocolate was too dark for The Sparky's liking (bonus, more for me!).

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  6. I am more excited about those bush tucker chocolates than I have been about anything in a while. I am so serious.

    Holy wow, how much do I want to try those! Must visit, must visit, must visit.

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    1. Yes, yes you must ... you could call it 'research' if that helps :)

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