In our neighborhood in Melbourne is a large converted warehouse called, appropriately, the South Melbourne Marketplace. I bet you can never guess what happens there.
Lots of deli's, prepared foods, meat markets, vendor stalls, clothing, toys, random things, groceries, and just about anything you would hope to find in a large city market.
And then I found, to my delight: WHOOPIE PIES! By a different name, but no mistaking two cake cookies with filling between.
Plus these oddly shaped and decorated, but very delicious looking fruit tarts.
All the pastries. All the time. Yum.
I did not stuff my face at the market, although I really did want to. We then rented bikes using Melbourne's bike share program, and headed towards the botanical garden. Aussie's seem to love their gardens, so we thought we'd check it out.
Upon arrival at the park, we were told by a very nice and polite Canadian (are there any other types?...ignoring the French Canadians, of course) that the best free view of the city was from the top of the armed services monument. Yep, another ANZAC monument. But the Canadian was right:
From there, to the botanical garden next door. While wandering through the fern exhibit (Yes, Australia has ferns, too, they're just not everywhere like the are in NZ). Under one of the trees, a bunch of stag horn ferns. I'm only familiar with them because my father has been keeping one since as long as I can remember, and I've never actually seen them anywhere else.
In a quite warm green house, a couple of Corpse Flowers. Which weren't anywhere near blooming, as at the time they simply looked like giant green stems with a few leaves on top. Evidently they grow from their tuber, send up leaves, and then the whole thing becomes a flower when it blooms. Then it dies back to the tuber, and repeats.
We then biked to the CBD in search of lunch and a beer. And saw this seemingly function, but very old school looking, beer tank in a beer bar under some rail tracks.
The brand is Carlton Draft, the local swill, but the tanks were cool. Evidently they are actually filled from a bulk tanker, and then the tap lines are served by these three copper jacketed tanks. Pretty cool, and very steam punk looking.
The river in Melbourne is the Yarra River. It's a relatively small, muddy river, but the city does a good job to integrate it into the metropolis, and it's lined with green space one side and a long esplanade on the other. With quite a few bridges, for cars, trains, and some foot bridges, too.
In fact, under this bridge is a small bar called Ponyfish Island. A little gimmicky, but the view, the people watching, and the atmosphere were all very nice. Another good suggestion by the NYT's 36 Hours In... series.
So Melbourne is known for it's alleys. This one was full of restaurants, and a newly opened Doughnut Time. Which was going to give out free donuts. Which meant there was a New York City sized line of people waiting for donuts. Probably at least 500, stretching several blocks.
The next alleyway is the designated grafiti alley: Hosier Lane.
Ignoring the sentiment, the alley was pretty cool (and a whole lot less disgusting than the gum wall in Seattle.) And these pictures only scratch a bit of all of the work there.
A very well utilized public square between the CBD, a major street car hub, and the river.
Somehow, unlike Gov't. Center in Boston, this giant bricked plaza is well utilized and seems more human in scale. We spent several hours here listening to live music, people watching, and just taking in the scene.
The lounging chairs don't hurt.
That evening, we went to a seemingly crazy, but pretty cool weekly event called "No Lights, No Lycra". The concept is simple: Lots of music in a completely dark room, filled with people dancing. The idea is to exercise by dancing, but also just to move freely and dance literally like no one is watching. Even though there were probably 50 people there, you couldn't see what they were doing, and they couldn't see you, so you basically could dance like you always wanted to, but were afraid people would see you do The Sprinkler for the 3rd time in ten minutes. Not that I did that.
And on the way back to our place, we passed the perfect hipster establishment.
If you can't read it, it says, "Coffee, Brunch, Bar". It would be the equivalent of a Parisian cafe, you could go in the morning, and not leave all day if you wanted. The coffee in Melbourne is supposedly really good, but we haven't tried too much yet. One gets tired, eventually, of paying $4 for single espressos, and since we drink our coffee black, it always seems like a better idea to just make it for ourselves.
In any case, a fun day.
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