Day 19: Saturday, February 23, 2002
Exploring Melbourne

Since we'd seen a lot of what we'd wanted to see of Melbourne yesterday, we figured we'd have a more leisurely day today. I'm not sure we succeeded, but we had a nice day nonetheless.

We slept later than usual and then spent some time collecting up a bunch of things we wanted to mail home, balancing the bulk of carrying against the cost of sending home. We found out that a few post offices in the central city were open on Saturday, which was a relief. We trundled back downtown on the tram, lugging three bags of stuff to ship out. We found the post office, and managed to fit our stuff into two boxes, one large and one small. It's great how they sell everything you need to mail stuff right at the post office, it's like a combined stationary store and post office — the way it should be. The US post office could learn from them. Anyway, the two boxes came to $AU115 (US$58), yikes. Still, it's worth it to lighten our load.

Shady street near Lygone Street

I'd read in the Rough Guide book about a place where you could watch crafts people do their work and buy their stuff so we wanted to check it out. It took us right through the Queen Victoria Market again, which we managed to walk through without buying anything (though we had a close call). We wound up in an area that seemed pretty quiet and unlikely to have any attraction and since the directions were unclear, we started to give up hope. Eventually we did find the building but it looked like they were renovating it or something. So that turned into a wild goose chase.

Ellen in Carlton Gardens

Next we wanted to sit in a nice park and read, so we made our way across town to the Carlton Gardens. In the book I'd been reading, they characters would meet there and it sounded nice, so I wanted to see it. Along the way, we came across Lygone Street, which was lined with Italian restaurants. Nearly every single shop was an Italian restaurant, and if it wasn't, it was some other type of restaurant. It looked nice, and I thought it might be nice to come back there for dinner later. Eventually we made it to the park, but it wasn't really that big. Mostly there was a huge old-style building (the Exhibition Hall) and the new Melbourne Museum. We sat on a bench for a while, but it was kind of cloudy and a little chilly and it just wasn't that busy a park, so it didn't seem right for sitting and reading.

Scene outside Melbourne Museum

Meantime, I had gotten into my head the idea of getting Devonshire Tea, so we thought that maybe we could get it at the museum, since they sometimes have high-end cafes. We walked there but one cafe was closed and the other one required a museum ticket. There's a huge IMAX theater in conjunction with the museum and we considered seeing the Antarctic exhibition movie (about Shackleton), but it wasn't playing till that evening, so we moved on. As we left the museum, we saw an amusing scene. There was a brightly colored trolly car sitting in front of the building, and a little girl painting a tiny corner of it, with her mom watching, making sure she stayed in the lines. It made us smile.

We picked up a tram heading back into the central city, figuring that we could try a fancy hotel to find Devonshire tea. We went to the Westin, and the conceirge there directed us to a famous place for tea, called the Hopetoun Tea Rooms on the Block Arcade on Collins Street, so off we went.

Bold bird approaches then eats our leftovers

When we got there (at about 2:35) it was closing up. Doh! The woman said they closed early on Saturday. So who is it who has fancy tea during the work week? We tried a couple more places in the Block Arcade (a row of shops and restaurants along a narrow alley between buidlings), but no luck. Earlier we'd seen an outside coffee shop that had scones, so we went back there and I put together my own Devonshire tea, asking for jam and cream and tea. Walendo had some too (with coffee). It was yummy and I was quite happy. After we finished we sat a while and watched the people. We also watched the very bold little birds that came along. They looked like chickadees, kind of cute. We both had some scone left on our plates, and one of the birds hopped onto the back of one of the chairs at our table. Then onto the table across the way. Then he hopped around the back of the tea cup getting close to the plate. Then little by little he hopped toward the plate, then onto the plate where he snagged some bites of the scone. Wow, pretty gutsy. Then his friends saw that we weren't going to resist, so they joined him. We took some pictures of the whole process.

Pedestrian bridge over Yarra River

The last thing we'd wanted to do was to walk along the Yarra River, so we walked the two blocks or so and climbed down the steps to the river. We crossed over a pretty pedestrian bridge to the other side, where there were a bunch of cafes and shops that seeemd to have been built recently, called Southgate. It was touristy, but it gave us a nice place to sit and watch the people. First we checked out the mall. They had a store selling CDs for AU$10 (US$5). Most of them were pretty old but we managed to find a few that we wanted, so we went for it. (Let's hope the car in New Zealand has a CD player, but even if it doesn't, it'll be good to have these.)

Crew practicing on Yarra River

Then we sat outside on a bench and watched the river and the people. We saw an Asian couple who had just gotten married having their wedding pictures taken on a nice boat. And we watched the tour boats go along, most of them empty for some reason. We also saw the crew team practicing, which was cool. Eventually, we got up and headed for the tram back to our hotel before dinner. As we walked, we saw a funny scene with a guy looking pensively out at the river with a seagull nearby looking in the same direction.

Like man, like bird

When we got back to the room, I checked email and heard a bunch of news about friends from home, thanks to a long note from George. It was good to find out what was going on. After about an hour or so, we went back downstairs and I checked in to find out if they had received the voucher from the travel agency showing that we had pre-paid for the three nights. It was a little unclear but I think they said we were okay. But I did learn that the hotel actually costs AU$105/night, which is amazingly cheap (US$52.50). We had booked it through the travel agency at $130, plus a 10% discount for $117. I'd thought we were getting a bargain because of the discount, but apparently not! I felt dumb for not just calling the hotel directly to book the extra nights once we realized we would arrive early. Oh well, I guess you learn. Either way, by American dollars, that's an incredibly cheap price for a fancy hotel in a major city.

We took the tram back into the city center. We'd thought we might eat at Southgate since it was closer, even though it was less authentic. When we got there, we forgot to get off the tram, so we continued on till we got north of city center and then walked over to Lygone Street, the Italian Row. It was Saturday night and the place was hopping. Even though there were dozens of Italian restaurants, they were all busy. We walked along checking out a few menus (they all looked the same), and in some cases someone from the restaurant approached and yelled stuff at you trying to get you to choose their place, which I didn't like. Walendo didn't want to be cramped and have people walking right by our table, so I looked for a place that had a reasonably roomy table. We found one that had a couple of tables available on the platform above the sidewalk, which gave you a good view of the street life but without being directly in it. There was even a reasonable amount of space between the tables, so Walendo was very happy. The meal was reasonably good, nothing exceptional but good. I made the mistake of ordering a salad, which arrived after the main course when I was no longer hungry for it. It was also larger than a normal side salad. One thing about Australia — I find the portions are generally as big as they are in the U.S. And the people are probably as big as they are in the U.S. too. In Europe, the portions are much smaller and lo and behold, most people are thin.

We watched the scene as we ate and discussed some of the news we'd heard about people at home. Lots of Asians were at our restaurant. There was something kind of interesting about Chinese people eating Italian food, not sure why. But they seemed to be enjoying it. After we finished, I still had room in my ice cream stomach and there was a gelato store across the street. We ambled down one side of the street and back up the other, making our way to the ice cream place. It was packed with people and I had to work my way to the front to get a cone, which was unusual. The homemade ice cream was the best I've had in Australia, so maybe that's why. Still, it doesn't rank with the best ice creams I've had.

We walked back to the tram while I happily ate my cone, and then made our way back to the hotel. Tomorrow we leave Australia and head to New Zealand.

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