Food Trucks, Monet, and the Bombers

Melbourne is known for its food, art and sports culture, and since there is always so much on it is easy to find activities relating to all three things to do in one day!  Food trucks have been slowly taking off here over the past couple years, and a new event called Trailer Park has started at Village Melbourne on St Kilda Road where a group of food trucks are featured each month on Saturdays and Sundays.  Tash, Carly and I met up for lunch there yesterday, and were able to sample some food trucks we haven't tried yet.  We shared tacos from Cornutopia, a mesquite smoked pulled pork po' boy from Gumbo Kitchen, and a combo plate from The Curry Truck.  Of the three my favorite was the po' boy, but they all tasted good.  For dessert we each picked a different flavor creme brulee from The Brulee Cart, which while tasty was not worth the price considering the size of the serve.  Trailer Park has a great atmosphere and we look forward to coming back in September to sample the next group of food trucks.

Tash and I then headed to the NGV to catch the Monet's Garden exhibition.  It mainly featured paintings Claude Monet did of his garden at Giverny in northern France, including the waterlilies and Japanese bridge he is most famous for.  It was so interesting to see these impressionist paintings up close and compare the variation of colors used to paint the same setting at different times of the day.  I didn't realise that later in life Monet had cataracts issues which affected his vision and perception of color.  Thankfully he was able to have surgery to restore his sight, but it must have been fairly devastating to go through that as an artist.  At the end of the exhibition there is this great panoramic film of the gardens at Giverny which makes you want to go there to visit it in person.  The exhibition is on until 8 September so if you are in Melbourne get down to the NGV to check it out.

After a mulled apple cider at the Tram Bar outside the NGV we hopped onto a train to get to Etihad Stadium for the twilight match between Essendon and North Melbourne.  Tash's cousin Nick O'Brien was starting in the team this week, and we were fortunate enough to get tickets from Tash's aunt.  The Bombers have not been playing well for the past month, and with the interim ASADA report on last year's supplements program and the club and senior officials being charged this week by the AFL for bringing the game into disrepute, I did not have high hopes for this match.  The skill level was poor throughout the game and we paid the price for errors on the scoreboard.  Although the boys finally showed a bit of life in the fourth quarter it was way too late and we ended up losing to North by 45 points.  There are two more matches left in the regular season, and we are going to make the finals no matter what (as long as we don't get stripped of our premiership points by the AFL).  I hope the team can find some form so we aren't completely embarrassed in the first round of finals.

Final Score
Essendon: 9.16 (70)
North Melbourne: 17.13 (115)