A good WOMOW find. Went to the Ballarat Curry House on Saturday night after reading about it in WOMOW and got some tasty Indian food at a good price. I tried the mango chicken too - it's very orange in color, but it tasted great. The roti bread and chicken tikka was good too.

Find a sheltered spot to sit away from the door if it's a cold night.

Approximate cost: $11-13

Five of us had a great evening at Bistro 1 last Friday. We went there on a recommendation from a friend and I would definitely recommend it to other people if you are looking for a place for a special occasion, but don't want to spend a small fortune. Four of us had the steak at $40, and it was cooked to perfection and served with seasonal vegies and a pepper sauce. I have given Bistro One five stars for value, because this is only a little more than you might normally pay for steak, but it's top quality.

My wife had the chicken, which she said was great.

For desert I had a soft centered chocolate pudding - awesome. Highly recommend.

Approximate cost: $30-$40, wines upwards of

I remember as young kid going to the original La Porchetta restaurant in Carlton. It was the only restaurant my parents would take us to, even though it used to take about an hour to drive up from our home down South of Melbourne. But boy did we love tucking into the pizzas, surrounded by all the photos pinned to the wall of famous people that had visited the restaurant. And at the end of the meal on lucky person would get to spin the wheel to maybe win a bottle of Spumante.

Whilst the Brighton La Porchetta restaurant doesn't have quite that same vibe as the original store, its great to see that the pizzas and prices haven't changed too much. The Brighton La Porchetta is still a great place to go with groups or for casual meal. My favourite pizza is the La Porchetta Original - I really love the sausage meat that they put on it.

Approximate cost: $10-14 per pizza

I have used AANet for nearly 3 years and I am very happy with them as an ISP. I was recommended to use them from a friend, and what I like is that they offer a static ip address with no port blocking on their ADSL connections. This means you can run your own mail server or whatever else takes your fancy.

They are not the cheapest though, but the quality is pretty good. And I very rarely have any outages, even though I am connected via a Telstra DSLAM. I reckon that AANet have reasonably low contention ratios too, as I find that the speed of my service is pretty consistent, even during peak evening times.

I notice on the AANet website that they strongly suggest that you seek support through the forums before calling them. I think this is because their client base is reasonably technical. On the odd occasion that I have called them, they have been very helpful - no Indian call centres!

Approximate cost: $39.95 for 512K

Opened in 1921, the Westgarth Theatre is an excellent example of art deco architecture. They have a wide range of films available and I think it's really fantastic to be able to go and experience the movie in such historic surrounds. It's nice to be able to get good coffee and take it in too.

Approximate cost: $Same as normal movies

Went to the Middle Brighton Baths Cafe this morning for breakfast with friends. With views of the historic Brighton Baths close up, the city skyline on the horizon, and yachts racing on the bay in between, there must be few places in Melbourne with views better than this. Well I can't think of too many anyway.

I had a muesli with yogurt, which was nothing to write home about (or here), but the scenery is really excellent and more than makes up for the standard fare being dished out.

Coffee still not as good as Cafe Racer.

Approximate cost: $8-15

Get a little taste of Nepal in downtown Carlton. I am not the biggest fan of Nepalese food, but Gurkhas was quite good. I usually find that the dishes are too mild for me, and these were unfortunately a little mild, but at least it's genuine! We had a lamb curry, goat curry, and a chick pea dish. Desert was a rice cream based dish.

Approximate cost: $15

The Windsor Castle has a rabbit warren of rooms that you can choose to tuck yourself away in. Several of them had fires, which was nice on a Winter's afternoon. Behind the bar were some strange artifacts, including a whole stuffed peacock.

We met friends there yesterday for a Birthday get-together. Our numbers fluctuated over the course of the afternoon, but there were anywhere between 15 - 25 people. The staff were a little impatient (some might even consider rude) about our efforts to move furniture around so that people could sit more easily together.

We had some food - Pizza and a Ravioli (at $20 for the Ravioli, I thought it was bit steep for pub food), which were reasonably nice, but nothing exceptional. But if you want a nice place to go for a small group - check it out.

Approximate cost: $18

We visited Cafe Najila last night for a friend's birthday. This Middle Eastern / Moroccan restaurant is at the South end of High St, almost opposite the Westgarth Theatre. The restaurant has that slightly grungy look of so many of the places in this area and certainly seems to be popular. We got off to a great start with the food - for entr%uFFFDe we had a couple of different dips, which were very tasty - homous and a mixed plate with marinated vegetables, feta cheese & beans.

I had chicken Maryland with cous cous main and my wife had chicken kabab. Both of these left a little to be desired with the kebab being dry and the chicken Maryland (doesn't sound very Middle Eastern to me) tasteless. Although the bed of rice that the kebabs were served on was very nice, but I was expecting better. Perhaps we came on a bad night, because I have heard good things about this place. The temperature inside was too cold - its got lovely high ceilings, but it made it a bit chilly.

Approximate cost: $20

I usually find that ski accommodation is a let down, but this time I was pleasantly surprised. Four of us stayed at The Arlberg at Mount Hotham at the end of July and we were very impressed with the room. It's not a cosy little club lodge, so if that's what you are after don't come here. This is a big place, with heaps of rooms and is great if you want a comfortable place to crash for the night. For $690 we got a fully self contained room with kitchen, bathroom, small balcony etc. It was more spacious than I expected and had the added benefit that the couch was a sofa bed, so that meant that no one had to share a bed. (We were 4 guys and there was 2 singles and a queen.) It had recently been done up too, so things were pretty new as well.

BTW, I rang one of the snow accommodation booking agencies and was told that there was availability on the weekend we wanted. I also rang the The Arlberg directly and they told me that there was no availability, so I think that some of the ski accommodation agencies must have preallocated bookings. Call around if they say they are full.

Oh yeah, the snow was awesome too!

Approximate cost: $690 for the weekend