Information about work, life and play in Regional Australia

Tuesday, July 15, 2008

Visiting Canberra - wandering round Manuka

Breakfast over, Dee and I went for a wander round Manuka just to see what had changed.

I am not a shopping person. I am not a shopping person. My wife and daughters are. Give them a shop and they will enter, even if they cannot afford to buy anything! Still, in this case I went along because I wanted to look at the shops myself.

One advantage that Manuka has over Sydney shopping centres is that the shops are in a self-contained space. This makes it very easy to browse.

We started at the Sheridan shop. I really liked this one because it had so many towels and sheets in one place. I was not in a buying mood, but I do like bright colours. From here we went to the various clothes' shops.

To me, Carla Zampatti is Carla Zampatti, just a name. Still, I was struck here and in other shops with the winter range. Like Melbourne, Canberra's winter climate means that there are clothes that you will not find in Sydney. This I liked.

Still, as a mere male the prices amazed me. Those who have known Manuka from the past will know that Millers of Manuka has been there for a very long while.

Millers used to be a middle of the range store. Not any more. It was sale time, so I looked at some of the labels. There was, for example, a nice Kenzo jacket. This had been discounted so that it was an absolute steal at a price of a just $1,630! I could see why so many of the people in Manuka seemed to be well and expensively dressed.

In all this, my favourite store was the Wine & Cheese Providores.

The wine can be found in the lower level store. I simply cannot afford some of the wines there, but it was nice looking. I was especially interested in the local wines, and here upon recommendation we bought a bottle of Murrambateman Ravensworth sangiovese for $22. I had not tried this grape before, but the wine was highly recommended.

Then we went outside and up the stairs to the cheese section. This is also a cafe. There we bought some bread, imported cheese plus Ligurian olives to go with our our sangiovese for lunch.

Entry post in this series here.

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