:: Vlog - Australian Accent ::

I am fascinated by accents. Whenever one of my friends from overseas posts a little video on Vine or Instagram I secretly hope I will be able to hear them talk because I love, love, love accents. I think I have a pretty standard Australian accent, but I get asked a LOT if I'm from America or New Zealand. Um, no. In light of this I thought I'd make a video for you guys so you can hear what I sound like!

I did a Google search and found a list of words that are apparently said differently around the world. Here they are so you can read them while you watch my video:
Aunt, roof, route, wash, oil, theatre, iron, salmon, caramel, fire, water, sure, data, ruin, crayon, toilet, New Orleans, pecan, both, again, probably, spitting image, Alabama, lawyer, coupon, mayonnaise, syrup, pyjamas, caught, orange, coffee, direction, naturally, aluminium, herbs.

And then some questions:
What is the bubbly carbonated drink called?
What do you call gym shoes?
What do you say to address a group of people?
What do you call the kind of spider that has an oval-shaped body and extremely long legs?
What do you call your grandparents?
What do you call the wheeled contraption in which you carry groceries at the supermarket?
What do you call it when rain falls while the sun is shining?
What is the thing you change the TV channel with?

And then a passage to read:
Please call Stella. Ask her to bring these things with her from the store: six spoons of fresh snow peas, five thick slabs of blue cheese, and maybe a snack for her brother Bob. We also need a small plastic snake and a big toy for the kids. She can scoop these things into three red bags and we will go meet her Wednesday at the train station.

Do I sound different than you expected? I'd love it if you could make a video and post the link in the comments below so I can hear what you sound like!

:: Melbourne - Second Wedding Anniversary (Part Three) ::

Yep, you read the title right. Another post about Melbourne. I promise this will be the last one. I'm dedicating this post to 'everything else' - the buskers, the cafes, the trams ... the little things that make Melbourne so special.

In case you missed them, here are part one and part two.

If you ever go to Melbourne, Sydney or Adelaide make sure you check out Haighs chocolate. Seriously. So good.

Mario was awesome. He was such a good guitar player (and poser, haha).

I am in love with The Little Library.

The back courtyard at The Vegie Bar. Such a fantastic restaurant - great service, great vegetarian and vegan menu (as well as gluten free options), with the added bonus of being on my favourite street in Melbourne - Brunswick Street, Fitzroy.

Melbourne Airport has love locks! Who knew!

Now I want to go back!

:: Melbourne - Second Wedding Anniversary (Part Two) ::

Mr LG and I have been to Melbourne a few times, sometimes for wedding anniversaries and sometimes just because. It's our favourite place to go on holidays. This year was my first time visiting the Melbourne Zoo. I love zoo's and it's always bummed me out that Brisbane doesn't have a proper one. The closest we have is Australia Zoo which is on the Sunshine Coast and while it is awesome, it still doesn't have all the animals that other zoo's have. The day we went the temperature hit 43 degrees (celsius - that's 109.4F, so you can imagine how hot it was!). So freaking hot! It was an awesome day though and I can't wait to go back again.

This poor guy was hiding in the shade.

I love this peacock photo because there is actually a wire fence between us. I used my manual focus to focus on the peacock and not the fence. You can sort of see it around his face - the little lines through the bokeh around his head is actually blurred fence.

My favourite zoo animal is the otters. They weren't in their enclosure when we were there which was sad. I also like red pandas. What's your favourite animal to see at the zoo?

Loved the little guy who landed on my shoulder while we were in the butterfly enclosure.

:: Melbourne - Second Wedding Anniversary (Part One) ::

Back in January Mr LG and I celebrated our second wedding anniversary! Woot woot! As is tradition, we went to Melbourne for a week. We went there for our honeymoon and first anniversary. We hope to go for every anniversary - our wedding anniversary is the 9th of January, so a trip to Melbourne is a great way to see in the new year and it doubles as a great way for me to extend my birthday celebrations!

I took thousands of photos on our most recent trip, so I've broken them into three posts for you - buildings, the zoo, and everything else. I'll start with the buildings because they are my favourite thing to see whenever I visit new places. I love historical buildings and Melbourne has SO many of them for me to drool over.

Posting these photos makes me miss Melbourne so much! It's one of those places that I feel I really connect with. I feel at home there. I think Mr LG and I will have to head down there for a weekend trip to tide us over 'til our next anniversary trip!