Wandering around Melbourne

In each city I tried to book one splurge, one excursion that cost more than we would spend on most days, something unique to that city. For Melbourne it was a bus trip to Moonlit Sanctuary and to Phillips Island to see the fairy penguins come in for the night.

Since the main purpose of the tour was to see the penguins come back at sunset, our tour did not start until 11 am giving us the morning free to explore Melbourne.

On our walk up to our room the day before I noticed a couple of things we wanted to explore. The first was a sculpture of a giant can of spray paint, and the second was a tram car on a school's campus that is being converted into a coffee shop.

What a cool coffee shop!

The coffee shop was of particular interest because I've read that Melbourne makes the best coffee in the world. As a non-coffee drinker, I figured if I am going to try coffee anywhere, it should be where the best coffee in the world is made. We met the chef for the tram. He said, he makes the best coffee. Unfortunately bureaucracy is as big in Melbourne as it is at home and despite being told it would have a soft open "tomorrow," it did not open while we were still in Melbourne. We went home without trying any Melbourne coffee.

Wanting to stay near our pick up location, we walked around the Queen Victoria Market, QVM to the locals. Our local Farmers Market would fit in a tiny corner of this market. They had rows of durable goods, including leather goods, suitcases (I could have used them back in Wellington), and a sweatshirt shop where for $20AUS ($15US) Don was able to buy a second sweatshirt for the trip. The trouble with packing lightly is sometimes you pack too lightly. The market also has a spacious farmers market, and many kiosks with places to buy prepared foods. We returned a couple of days later for a crepe before church from Kiki's Crepes, which is only open on weekends. There are souvenir shops selling the same socks, magnets, and postcards at the same prices. 

There are also specialty shops, such as the vintage picture shop I fell in love with. There were signs saying no photos allowed, which I begrudgingly respected. I asked the owner if anyone has ever wandered into her shop and recognized someone in a photo. She said it has only happened once, she gave the person the relative's wedding picture for free. I thought of all of the albums that make their way to the dump because people don't know what to do with them. I also thought of Ransom Riggs's Miss Peregrine series which uses old photographs and stitches together a collection of really bizarre stories to match them. For all I know he creates the story first, then takes a old-fashioned looking photograph to match it, but when I read the first book in the series I imagined he stumbled upon old pictures at an antique store and wove a story to match them.

On the street side of the QVM we stopped at a café for filling lunch. Once you go on a bus tour you are at their mercy and have no idea when or where we'll stop for food.

We met up with our long bus at the Radisson around the corner from where we were staying. I was surprised the bus filled leaving perhaps one empty seat. There were families, and couples. Unlike other smaller tours, we did not bond with the whole bus. We did get to know one Florida couple who was about our age, but did not swap information with them.

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I'm going to fast forward to the end of the day. After a two hour bus ride, we were dropped off by the Immigration Building in Melbourne around 10 pm. At that point we were hungry, but not interested in a sit down meal. We ventured to Elizabeth Street where we noticed many Asian take out restaurants with lots of Asian students hanging around. After some asking around, I still don't know what type of Asian cuisine is most prevalent. I'm under the impression it is a fusion combination of South Asian cuisines. I tried asking several people what language the restaurants are in, but was met with confusion instead of an answer. In any case, we chose one at random. Our dinner had the bonus of coming with in a reusable bowl in a reusable bag. As our room was short a bowl (later discovered in the tiny dishwasher), and we could use the plastic bag as a laundry bag, it felt like a huge win. That, and we ate dinner that night.

Back at the room