More markets, museums and so much walking

The day started off like so many days this week - cloudy. The big difference today is that it was also properly raining on and off. Yay. Definitely the Australian equivalent of Wellington. 

One thing we've noticed here is the number of people who smoke. It's so much worse than anywhere else I've been in the past 10 years. And I have only seen maybe five vapers and no vape shops, unlike NZ where we are plagued with them.

Other than the airport and Auckland, our only other planned destination was the Queen Victoria Markets. Much bigger and more variety than the South Melbourne Markets. Good old Bourke St tram was our starting point, this time with an exciting twist of a change in tram to go upways.

The entrance we came through saw me desperately gagging and holding my breath trying to get past the rows of stinking seafood stalls. Not a great introduction. Next section was the delis, with every imaginable cured meat, spices and anything in between.

Breakfast was a bratwurst hotdog thing with way too many onions, which were very nice.

We took a walk around the inside and outside stalls, hundreds of them with meats, veges, crafts, souvenirs, dodgy novelties and utter tat. I was going to buy a peeler thing but I'm always suspicious when they don't display the price. And after the sales pitch, I'll stick with the peeler we have at home that didn't cost $35.

Going to miss these - freshly juiced juices, no yoghurt, "nectar" or apple base. This is completely orange and pineapple.

Raspberry, pistachio and almond croissant from a genuine French deli bakery. Very good but suspiciously identical to one we got earlier in the week at a laneway Cafe. Either they managed to get the same recipe exactly the same, or they all order them from the same place in bulk.

The building in the background is blue, that's not the sky which was absolutely dark grey.

If this kind of looks like a rustic back alley, that's because it is. I almost got knocked off my seat twice by someone coming out a door behind me from the rear of one of the delis. Quaint. 

We had a few hours to fill before our flight so we went for a bit of a walk to the Helenic museum.

Greek hsitory and art is full of statue penises and boobs. These ones were alarmingly realistic, in a very dark and quiet room. Very unsettling.

Those crazy ancient Greek, using gold ring pulls on their drink cans.

One of the many, many malls in Melbourne, I can't remember what this is called but has a pretty memorable entrance. The eyes were all moving.

And inside the mall is an old Shot Tower, where they used to make shot. In the tower.

We decided we had had enough of people and headed back to the hotel to get our bags and head off. Saturdays is when the weirdos come out in Melbourne. These ones were showing everyone how badly they misunderstand basic science.

Back at the hotel minds were changed and hunger beat out desires to stay away from crowds. This time we got the the Melbourne Emporium, a crazy layout of four + floors full of noise, people and more noise. Plus some extra people.

Last lunch!

Damn good fast food chips, plenty of chicken seasoning.

By all accounts a good chicken Parma.

And a Hawaiian chicken schnitzel sandwich. Hellishly messy but pretty damn good. $16 so it was pretty damn expensive too.

A new twist on my favourite - they seriously need to sell Solo in NZ a lot more.

Always a good sign

A farewell to an average hotel in a great location. Pretty amateur operation with poor maintenance, missing towels but a great location. 

Never seen a sunset from above before.

Air NZ have better meals - they give you ice cream, not crackers and hummus with Qantas. That's just weird.

Their in-flight WiFi works, unlike Air NZ though.

It's been a long week, with so many steps, over 2000 photos taken (about 200 included in the blog) and quite a few things eaten.

Final thoughts: Melbourne is okay but I much prefer Sydney. It is a very clean CBD, full of character and life and it felt very safe but the weather is pretty rubbish and the flies are bad. Getting around the city is so easy with the trams, and I'm dreading going back to Auckland's rubbish transport and traffic.

It's going to be a slow quiet day tomorrow for us catching up on sleep and resting our feet!

Marketing and Parking

Our last full day here started off warm and cloudy, and on a free tram. It wasn't supposed to be free but the tap on / off thing doesn't work half the time and nobody checks. So we are now fully qualified to emigrate to Australia since we are criminals. Not that we want to really, a bit too busy and the climate is a bit extreme.

We headed back to the South Melbourne Markets for another look and to try some different food.

First up was Ugo Burrata, a sandwich with roast pork, pesto and mozzarella, plus other bits and pieces. The guy at the till was a bit despondent and not very chatty but friendly enough. 

Definitely one of my favourite sandwiches of this year, Louie wasn't too fussed with it but I thought it was fantastic. Garlic butter, crispy crackling with the pork and really soft focaccia. It wasn't cheap, $24 for a whole one, but half each was plenty.

I followed up with some health food, deep fried potato (bottom), beef arancini (left), chicken schnitzel (right) and gourmet sausage rolls (top). The arancini was so good, reminded me of a Hawkes Bay meatball (bitterbal).

Louie got a croque monsieur from internet famous Agathe, he found it okay, not as fresh as he'd like and has had better.

I decided to give cannolis a final try. I had two in the US and thought maybe I got the tourist version so it was a bit gross. The guy at the till was a bit despondent and not very chatty but friendly enough. Wait a minute... he looked the same as the guy at the Burrata place, as in identical. We checked a little later and the Burrata guy wasn't there but they were wearing different shirts. He runs two stalls? He has a twin? He owns more than one shirt? These answers are now lost to time. 

Anyway, back to the cannolis. They are all gross, weird uncooked cake batter texture. One mystery solved at least. 

We took a detour to the nearby Woolworths for some Australian only biscuits and I got a little sidetracked. 

For those 80's kiwi kids!

Some things are far cheaper back home.

The only roundabout we've seen so far, and the Markets. By the crazy build up of cars just before and after this photo it was the first roundabout a lot of the drivers had seen as well. 

For the middle part of our day we headed to the old Treasury building and the parks behind it. The greeters at the front were a little too eager and we got a full briefing on how a museum works. Apparently you go room to room, each one has a theme and as you go down the corridor their time periods get closer to now. Fuck me, glad I had that explained otherwise we would have been lost. 

The Treasury building is next to a couple of park / gardens which were far better than the botanical gardens. Despite the sunny day it was still relatively normal temperature, maybe just above 20c so the park was pretty busy with people doing park things. There seemed to be quite a few large groups, maybe having their end of year functions. These would be the more sedate businesses, doing wholesome team building things. The more lively ones seemed to be having the end of year events at our hotel going by the number of drunken oafs bumbling through the foyer later on in the night. It's amazing how much an absolute unit of a man can bend and flip when he goes arse over tit after walking straight into an armchair. 

Park sights, pretty great. Loads of tree lined pathways, large open grass areas and all sorts of memorial and themed bits. The waterfall was in front of the JFK memorial, with no explanation as to why either existed. 

The Conservatory is quite popular with weddings and random women in crowns and dresses having their photo taken. The gardens inside were spectacularly ordinary. My mum grew more exotic flowers in the vegetable garden. I mean these were fine but were just normal plain old violets and those purple bushy ones. 

Captain Cooks cottage. We didn't want to pay for a ticket, it was pretty small and probably not worth it. From memory they brought it over from England and rebuilt it here, a city that I'm not aware he even visited.

One of the random things in the park was a minute Tudor village just sitting there. Apparently it was gifted by a group or other in the early 1900's for reasons.

And right next to the Tudor village is the fairy tree. Creepy and strange, from the 1930's and again no reason for it to be here, but here it is. 

It really is a lovely park, with loads of different areas and corners. And as with everything else here - clean and well maintained.

They do love their churches here. So, so many churches.

I got this shot because the pedestrian light turned green just as we arrived and I needed to take a minute. Kind of amazed I actually got it since most of the time we were swiping away flies.

Parliament buildings, ironically flying a First People's flag since this is the building in which most of their rights and lands were broken or taken away.

Dinner was a bit of an average one, Betty's Burgers next to the hotel. We were going to a show tonight and didn't want to be all sweaty and moist so we kept the walking to a minimum. Which matched the dinner because they kept the value and quality to a minimum. 

Looking from our hotel room, you can see the enormous distance we had to travel to get to the theatre. We were putting our ethics aside and going to see MJ The Musical.

With icecream.

The only shot I got of the show, you weren't allowed to talk photos or videos.

The actual production was fantastic, the sets and lighting was amazing, fantastic sound and singing. Really glad we went.

As a side note, you can see the hair of the woman in front of me at the bottom of that photo. It may contain a bit of chocolate from my icecream. I dropped some on my shirt which I pulled to ping it off and it flew directly into that nest.

Since it was our final night in Melbourne we headed back to our new favourite desert destination Burrata for more of the same. I'm going to miss being able to get amazing food and a coffee at 11:30 at night. The place was fair heaving with families, no nonsense and everyone was having a great time.

The tram back was taking ages to leave the stop before, and when it did arrive it was absolutely crammed full. We managed to wedge ourselves in and realised Lady Gaga was playing in Melbourne tonight and this tram was coming from the stadium. One more unique experience courtesy of Melbourne.