What is a weekend trip

What is a reasonable distance to travel for the weekend? We generally feel that anything more than three hours driving is too far away to qualify for a weekend trip. None of us gets great satisfaction or enjoyment from driving or sitting in a car. I wish we did though because that might be redefining. But what about all those lovely places outside of our three hour bubble? Sure there are always airplanes but is all the money and hassle worth the day or two we would get at our destination? What happens is that we end up in a weekend trip bubble. But that's quite alright because within a three hour drive we have country, mountains, rivers, cities (including Sydney), bush, and endless beach to choose from. It would take us a long time to exhaust all our possible weekend adventures and most of them are so good that we would be happy to repeat them numerous times anyhow. 

But what about Melbourne? It's a fun place to visit full of fun people that we are very fond of. Except it is a seven hour drive. And seven is more than twice three. So sure enough, though we have been back in Australia for half a year we had not yet been for a Melbourne visit. But hey there was a three day weekend coming up and three is more than two. So I did that sneaky parent thing where I convinced my children it was worth it to drive a lot because it would involve pots of gold (metaphorical ones unfortunately) at the other end. Oh yeah and I threw in promises of a lollipop in the car.

It was a lot of driving. It was also worth it. We all had a magnificent time seeing friends, going to festivals, eating gelato, swimming, having sleep overs (some of us), meeting babies newly born and babies soon to be born and babies grown, hooping it up, visiting an urban cheese cellar, picnicking, drinking coffees (one of us), playing in playgrounds and enjoying the simultaneous freedom and ungainliness of public transportation. Two days was sort of not enough but we made the most of it. We all felt so invigorated by our journey (and maybe dehydrated) that we set a new family record by driving back home (under seven hours) without stopping once. 

Zadie knows she's a future baller

The cheese cellar was amazing and frigid. We got Epoisses, Tomme de chèvre, and some sort of bûche

Meanwhile,  Canberrans are flying around in balloons