Arting and Parking

Today was a much sunnier affair but not much warmer. That's coming tomorrow onwards with a visit to the zoo and maybe the beach.

Our first stop was a cafe down an alleyway, and it definitely delivered. Very small and slightly cramped but very friendly and great coffee.

Decent sized cup, strong coffee and a splash of milk. Perfect. 

Ham and egg wrap - so good, real leg ham and I don't know how they did the eggs but they were the best. 

Exactly how we imagined Melbourne cafes, and glad we finally found one. We went past a few that changed from their trendy style to corporate whores, so it was getting to be a bit of a worry.

Not quite the pristine sapphire waters of the Shotover River, this holidays river is typical Australian mud brown. The travel has been a mix of trams and walking, so saved our feet quite a bit. There is a free tram zone surrounding the CBD and any stops outside of that cost. So this morning we got off at Flinders Station and a 10 minute walk got us to the Melbourne Gallery.

And past some pretty strange buildings. They really like their radio towers.

The solid edifice of the Art Gallery, I think I liked it but the thumbs up was just wrong. 

And so we ploughed through a variety of "art", here a Japanese woman has smeared some shit on a bit of wood. Super.

Yep, some ducting counts as art these days. It definitely wouldn't pass for actual ducting, it was full of gaps and shoddy pot rivets.

This bloke appears to be upset with these other two chaps... buggering about. The description had some nonsense about the duality of conflict but I think they got confused about the concept of being stabbed with a pork sword.

Never have I wanted to slap a statue as much as I did seeing these two.

Good to see even Degas recognised the trials of standing on dog shit. 

A room I could have happily spent hours in. So many paintings in all directions. They had displays where you could find info on the paintings but most of the details were about the frames. 

The gallery was good, but quite a bit was taken up with room after room of porcelain cups and glass bowls. Not enough 19th century landscapes for my liking. The main gallery was free entry, with specific exhibitions paid, which seemed like great value until you try and buy a custard square at the gallery Cafe. They can fuck right off with their $18.

After the gallery we walked through the botanical gardens which is quite big. Luckily it was still fairly cloudy otherwise we would have been stuffed. There are all sorts of massive trees, ponds and walkways throughout and happily only mad parrotish birds, no sign of bastard magpies.

The Shrine of Rememberance is very grand and imposing but obviously didn't leave much of an impact since they went right back to war 20 odd years later.

Great view from the top, and a reminder of how insane the Australian relationship with the First People is. The face on the building in the distance is an Aboriginal leader from the 1900's, and there are many other examples where their history and culture are celebrated but they still treat them like shit.

Next we headed into the botanical gardens and this sign pretty much sums it up. Everything was closed or being worked on, so we gave it up and moved on.

I got some shirts from the DFO outlet mall the other day and they were so comfortable I went back for more. And being there meant we could do another foray to the Juce Lab that resulted in a Mega Mango smoothie. Boost Juice just doesn't cut it.

From the DFO we took a long walk along the river front. Kind of like the Viaduct but fewer yachts and a lot bigger and nicer. Pretty much everything here is bigger and nicer other than the Yarra River, that's just like Auckland Transport. A bit shit.

What passes for CBD steet art I guess. There was a painting of Tama Iti as well for no adequately explained reason.

Once again the Tram was our saviour. We are definitely getting used to it, changing trams between cross and main streets with the certainty it's going where you want it to because it's on tracks.

One astonishing thing we saw was the police pull up a guy on a food delivery scooter who did something wrong at the lights. That is absolutely unheard of in NZ, they can't do anything about mass crowds of jackasses on bikes while here they deal with the buggers.

After a bit of a rest at the hotel we headed out for dinner and Easey's, a place we saw on a few YouTube videos. We got an Uber which dropped us in the middle of Collingwood surrounded by grafitti and no sign of a restaurant. After a second of prentending to sound like we were in the right place we turned the corner and saw we were all good. The seating is in the left hand train, not sure what's in the other two.

There is an elevator but they sent us up the stairs, all four floors of it and all looking like this.

To the carriage what was a lot cleaner than it looks.

We've had two smash burgers now and they've both been fantastic. This one even more so. Crispy edges but still juicy in the middle, fantastic BBQ sauce and mayo with a side of oozy mac & cheese.

A stroll down the road afterwards for a Piccolina ice cream, served by a young woman who was all too happy and delighted to be serving us at 9pm on a Tuesday night.

And a final snap for the evening, the Collingwood street where we had our ice cream. This goes on for quite a bit, with restaurants all along it, the buildings are all built 1800 / early 1900s and plenty of grafitti about but everything is clean. The footpaths are clear of rubbish and wee stains, everyone is just relaxed and having a good time. It's what K Road and Newtown should be.