Melbourne

The day after Thanksgiving we headed out on the road again. This time we flew off to Melbourne to visit the crew out there. The plan was to spend a couple of days in Melbs with Matt and Laura, and then we’d all head out for a road trip on the Great Ocean Road together.

We didn’t get all that much time in the city, but the in the time we did have we did a lot of eating and there was a good amount of dancing. Almost immediately after arriving at Matt and Laura’s, they lead us out to meet up with Sabina and some other friends of there’s at Camy Shanghai Dumpling & Noodle Restaurant for a dumpling feast. On Friday nights this place gets packed due to an all you can eat special. However, I don’t think they counted on the bottomless pits our group had for stomachs. Our table placed order after order, to the point where the wait staff was giving us looks of nearly disgusted incredulity. We had a big group, and they were good dumplings – in particular the pumpkin dumpling. I have no idea how many of those I put away.

I definitely rolled out of there, but at least I was able to work off a few calories dancing later that night. We found a little dance bar that was nearly empty and pretty much took it over for ourselves.

The next day was also pretty much dominated by food related activities. Matt and Laura guided us through the massive Queen Victoria Market -- just miles and miles of food, toys, candy, clothes, and souvenirs. The object was get breakfast and load up on supplies for our road trip. We picked up loads of bread, cheese, and fruit.

Loved the cheese. Many of the cheese stalls offer a preselected assortment at a discount. You don’t to choose, but you get anywhere between 3 and 5 different cheese to try for very little money. Another nice little feature of the market is the various wine vendors. There are several offering deals to keep you coming back – some have jugs they’ll refill for you or recycle their bottles and give you a discount on the next round. Off course you can do tastings to figure out which ones you want to take home next. We had to get a couple of bottles for the road.

We spent so much time roaming around the market that we were left with very little time to see the rest of the city. The rain didn’t help much either, but we did get to ride the trolley, roam around the streets a bit, caught a couple of sights and popped into beautiful St. Patrick’s Cathedral.

There were pit stops of course. In the afternoon, we escaped the rain by stepping into Mrs. Parma’s to grab a delicious Holgate Brewhouse Temptress Chocolate Porter. It’s infuse with Dutch chocolate and it was oh, so tasty.

When it started raining again not too long after that, we met up with friends, and dove into Tiamo 2 for a delicious Italian dinner. I think if I lived in Melbourne and dove into a bar or restaurant every time it started raining, I’d get quite fat, but the arrangement suited me quite well while we were in town for just a couple of days.

On the books for that evening was something a little different. Movember is huge in Australia. All through November men grow mo’s to raise awareness for men’s cancers and depression. It just so happened that Melb’s Movember celebration was happening that night and Matt and Laura managed to get us some extra tix through a friend of theirs. We hadn’t planed for this, so we had to improvise. The invitation said to dress up in costumes or cocktail attire. Laura and I took that at face value and dressed up in dresses and wore heels. We ended up wishing we’d thought this one out better. First off, almost anytime costumes are welcome, dressing up is probably less than required. Second, it turned out the party was outside, it was cold and it had rained all day. The field was soggy and our heels sank into the muddy grass every time we took a step.

Matt chivalrously carried Laura across the grass to keep her from sinking into the soggy ground.

Greg’s improvised costume turned out much better, given the amount of time he had. He hadn’t been growing a mo, so all he had to work with was stubble. Considering that and the fact that his stubble was pretty much translucent, I thought he’d pulled it together pretty well.

Our friend Michael went another route. He was also visiting and unprepared, so he found a way to fake a mo.

Michael, his mo, and Lego man

Despite the soggy field, it was pretty fun. Seeing all the crazy mo’s and costumes people came up with was pretty amusing. Plus, they had bumper cars – and who doesn’t love bumper cars?

When muddy feet got to be too much, the group set out to find an indoor bar and ended up at The Croft Institute. This place is too cool for school . . . actually, it’s more like high school on acid. The ground floor is looks like a lab for mad scientists in training – there are beakers and vials everywhere, and even the tables are actually high school lab desks.

The upper level looks a little like the high school gym in Nirvana’s Smells Like Teen Spirit. Even getting to this place is a trip. It’s totally tucked away at the end of winding alley with graffiti covered walls to guide your way there.

Actually, this bar kind of illustrates both what I liked and didn’t like about visiting Melbourne. Well, I shouldn't say dislike, because we had a great time in the little time we were there. Melbs seemed like it would be a cool city to live in, because the joy would be in discovering all the restaurants and funky boutiques hidden down the ubiquitous side streets and alleyways. The opportunities for exploration and discoveries seem endless. For the same reason, it’s not quite as easy to get a real sense of the place in a short period of time. The only reason we got to go to some of these cool spots is because we had good guides. I suppose that can be said about visiting any major city, but it seems particularly true about Melbourne. The trolley is set up to take tourists on loop that goes by the main historic sites, but I feel like that doesn’t really give enough of a glimpse at the funky flavor of the place. I would definitely have liked to have spent more time there and get to know the city better . . . minus the rain, of course, I’m never super keen on rain.