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.

Immigration

Right, the plan for today is less walking, more relaxing especially since it was going to be very hot and humid. First stop was breakfast at another of our bookmarked places, Caffee E Torta. Tram time! I am going to miss these so much next week. Despite the heat and considering they are often quite full any time of day our fellow passengers always seem to be reasonably free of BO which is a blessing. The same cannot be said of other city's public transport users. An eye watering aroma on the Staten Island ferry springs to mind.

We went through a few Arcades and Laneways today and I'll try to remember their names. Or make them up, probably won't make any difference. Our first one was the Royal Arcade which ended in Gog and Magog, who rang their bells at the strike of three minutes past 10. Typical Australians, late.

Our genuine Italian cafe decorated with French posters, a huge map of North America in Chinese and a host who was completely Australian. Food was good, coffee was great and the setting very continental. Meaning we sat outside because it was small, cramped and hot inside.

A bit of local colour to terrify the tourists. I did finally get to show Louie who this Dame Edna Everage was, and that she was famous. He's now at least aware of her and Kath & Kim. Just Russell Coight and The Comedy Company to go (he's fully up to play on The Castle).

The Block Arcade was very Victorian with a heavy Christmas theme, and a famous high tea / cake shop near the entrance, called "The Historic Tea Rooms" I think. Going by the battalion of prams outside it was popular with the housewife set of CBD Melbourne and definitely not for us.

The last was a laneway / arcade called Centreway which was filled with street front food displays and delis, with everything you could want on offer. I've realised that we usually find these places just after we've had food and then forget to go back.

We got onto a tram at Flinders Station to head to St Kilda's Beach. It was a 20 minute ride so there was plenty of opportunity to examine the cars next to the tracks and there was a motley assortment of idiots on display. Some were right dogs.

On arriving at the beach (actually as soon as we got off the tram) we were beset with flies smacking into our faces and buzzing in our ears. It was pretty much constant, and I wondered if maybe we weren't as fresh as our fellow passengers but Louie reassured me that there were plenty of others furiously batting away flies as well. Oh for an Aussie cork hat!

As for the beach: two stars out of five. The waves were calm, the sand was nice and easy to get to and that's about it. Absolutely no interesting features other than a bloody long pier. It was a bit stinky as well.

Interesting to see these two make an appearance, so far I've seen them in Devonport, Melbourne and New York,

The St Kilda Pier. It was a nice walk out, looked at some rocks covered in penguin shit, inhaled the fragrance of sulphur and walked back again.

We were planning on walking past Luna Park to a internet famous cake shop but we were so sick of the flies we fucked off back to the city sharpish. Stand in a bathroom that has had the hot water running for four hours and the door closed, then introduce a few hundred annoying little flies and you'll get the picture.

Back in the civilisation of the CBD, we found a corporate type cafe called Oscars or Wanktons or something. I'm happy to report they call these things sandwiches here. The idotic habit of calling things "Sandos" hasn't taken off here like it has in NZ. I don't know why it annoys me, but by christ it does get on my tits.

After a quick phase of going into the Aquarium, gasping "fucking how much?" at the $53 per person entry fee and then leaving, we went a block up and went through the Immigration Museum. Firstly it was very air conditioned. Five stars. I didn't care if it just had a ticket stub in a glass case that said "some people moved here" - I'd give it five starts for the air conditioning. There were quite a few interesting rooms, and detailed histories of how the history of Australia is extremely shameful but didn't come across as negative somehow. More constructive and educating. Not much mention of New Zealand immigration, nor how those who move over raise the IQ of both countries. 

This massive great room was being set up for a Ted Talk. Didn't know they were still a thing, but there you go.

The top floor of the museum is dedicated to an exhibition about Joy. So this means psychedelic Tardis rooms, terrifyingly large stuffed rabbits, a 1990's style video store (no horror section and where the plastic curtain to the Adult movies should have been was the exit. So much for joy.

One of our favourite aspects of Melbourne.

We checked out Hosier Lane next, which was definitely a mix of street art and bullshit scribbling. All I know is if someone decided to decorate my wall like this I'd have a bucket of hot piss ready to pour down mid-spray.

The MCG in evening glory. I only have a passing interest in cricket and Louie has less than zero so this is about as close as we will get.

Dinner and desert were two repeats tonight, Il Mercato in time for the Pizza and Pasta stores to be open. It was fine. I think Melbourne does lunch food so much better than it does dinner.

The second repeat visit was to the place we visited on our first night here, Brunetti's for desert. Lychee and Raspberry & Mint choc  Gelati, Raspberry cake fudge ball thing, some Nutella cake erection and an espresso each to finish. Yes, we were able to get a hot drink after 4pm!

I spotted these on our way out, red velvet Swiss Rolls. Probaly look far better than they taste, but they looked so good!

So a day that was planned for relaxing turned out to be busier than yesterday. Our step count has been around 18,000 each day so all the food has maybe been balanced with the exercise.

Our last full day tomorrow, should be a little cooler so we might do more markets and some parks / gardens.