... my ticket has been maxed

yes, today i went beyond the bounds of my 1+2+3 weekly metcard ticket - i had to pay an extra $8.40 for a return connection from werribee to geelong. pretty bloody inexpensive, i reckon, and i was very impressed with how cushy the v-line trains are. or at least the ones i caught.

attached to this is a tale of two eateries. the first eatery was a hotel bistro at apollo bay. the second was the wharf shed cafe at geelong. one impressed me greatly. one did not.

i had what i felt to be a delicious porterhouse steak with even more delicious mashed potatoes (and i love good mashed potatoes... just ask, i don't know, anyone who's seen me eat at sizzler (although that might descend into a comment like, "doesn't he take a dinner plate to the chocolate mousse section of the dessert bar?") or perhaps at my mum's place when she's cooking rissoles - and hers are par excellence), along with some stir-fried vegetables and a delightful peppercorn sauce. all-in-all, scrumdiddlyumptious. the table-clearing was pretty damn efficient too, i might add. the meat was cooked so well that i thought i may well have to explore the other meat-cooking categories one or two south of my usual "well-done". not blue, or bloody... but maybe medium-well-done, or medium.

i also shared a pizza with cheese, pineapple, and chunks of virginia ham. it wasn't very big, and while it tasted delicious i didn't think the size or quality warranted the rather inflated price-tag attached. what put me off more than the price (and i paid almost twice as much for my steak meal, so please don't think i'm being a cheapskate... in this particular instance!) was the service. i really felt like i shouldn't have been there, and i felt like i didn't earn enough to be there. given the prices they were charging for the drinks on the menu, and given a reasonable guess as to the cost prices of those drinks, i think they could have spent more money on water jugs so that any table that wanted to keep one on their table would be able to. i was singularly unimpressed by eatery #2 and will not be returning.

i'll leave you to mix and match which goes with which.

p.s. i also got to see the remains of the twelve apostles. (part of the reason for the road trip from geelong.) very cool. the long and winding road that is the great ocean road, however, needs regular stops for replacing of... ummm... convenience bags. excuse me...