Nikki's Birthday Pub Crawl Extravaganza

After 5 whole months of planning and counting down and talking about it, Nikki's birthday pub crawl finally arrived yesterday. I met Nikki and Layne for breakfast at Slice, for a simple, sturdy feed to start the day.

As 12pm hit, and Layne and I started dreaming about our first beer we headed to the first stop on our route, the Duke of Kent...to find it not open! Oops! Our second pub was another couple of blocks away, and so we had two pots at the Oxford Scholar. Here we were joined by Kylee and Tim, and Melissa, before "N" adorned Stacey and Andrew arrived in time to walk with us to the next stop.

Alissa and Michelle found us as we were leaving the pub, and we walked around the corner on Franklin Street to Mac's - which is an old looking pub hiding the bar Miss Libertine's. Amazing deco inside, this venue had the group grow with Bree and Kelly, Michelle, the Sydney crew, as jugs of beer were passed around among vodkas.

Walking past a closed Stork, our group merged through the market crowd to find the awesome balcony of the Mercat Cross. Joined here by Dan and co, Mary and Dan, we took in our pots overlooking the city and busy Queen Victoria Market below.

Up to Victoria Street, Kylee and I found a closed Public Bar, before we all went into the crusty front bar of Central Club for a very quick drink stop, while Justin and Rex joined us. Next stop was Bev and Mick's Backpackers Vic Hotel to mingle with the travellers for a drink.

A stop off the map to one of my favourite pubs, The Drunken Poet, with Siobhan serving our growing group on what would have been a quiet Saturday afternoon.

Getting back to the map, we headed to the Royal Standard, where we found no football coverage, to our dislike. The Carron Tavern was next, where I'm told we had our jagerbombs...jager has messed with me since being back on the drink, and has caused memory blanks afterwards....hmmmm.

We made it to the Royal Mail where we filled the front room. I am fairly sure I must have skipped the Mooma, before finding myself at the Railway for quite some time on my own, ahead of the group.

When the rest of the group arrived I was settled in with a beer, and Melissa was banned from ordering anything after making the barman unhappy by ringing his bell! Hee hee.

With the station right there, the group got a train into town, and I had dinner with half the crawl group at Young and Jackson, before hitting the wall after a long day of drinking.