What kind of fried balls would you like?

Monday, March 16 and Tuesday March 17th

S&G had to work during the day while I was in Melbourne, so I ventured out on my own. Luckily for me, Sarah’s family had just visited and her mom had left the Melbourne Lonely Planet book. I hopped on a tram and wasn’t quite sure of my destination, and got off near the National Gallery of Victoria, but first had a coffee at the Eiffel Tower.

Melbournians love their coffee, to my delight. I swear my coffee consumption has increased exponentially since my travels began in January. I next headed into the National Gallery of Victoria and saw special exhibits on Bagetti, Fashion (it was also the Loreal Fashion Week in Melbourne this week) and on satire from France and England in the mid to late 1800s, my faves being cartoons depicting wives in rebellion against their husbands.

Following the gallery, I decided to hop on the free tourist bus for a few stops, which let me off in China Town where I wandered around to some different spots and eventually found myself outside of the Parliament building. Later on, I ended up going to the Roof Top Bar, where I had a pint ($9.50! But so tasty--beer is wildly pricey here) and enjoyed the Melbourne skyline while listening to a Dylan album with a few hipsters.

Beware the Neanderthal Blood!!!

Later I wandered into a few different boutiques and record stores and enjoyed my time perusing the stacks before I had a delightful lunch of dumplings at, where else, Chinese Dumplings restaurant. Melbourne has a lot of Dumps places, and I was not disappointed, plus, they gave me a bendy straw for my Coke. My next step though was very unplanned--going into a shoe store and buying a pair of metallic turquoise pointy shoes and a pair of lavender flats. Nevermind they were totally unneeded.

The rest of my walk about the CBD (Commercial Business District) lead me to another record store, down some laneways, and eventually back to Federation Square, which is directly opposite Flinder’s Street Station.

There Sarah and I had a pint while waiting for Gareth and then we stumbled upon a delightful restaurant for dinner which had the best calamari I have ever had.

Tuesday morning I went for a jog along the bay--so different than the beach in Mumbai, which is so much more crowded, but both are so beautiful. Then I hopped on Gareth’s bike and onto the bike path to visit St. Kilda’s Pier, it was pretty chilly that morning but it was quite beautiful by the water. I then made my way to Luna Park, which is an old-school amusement park with a wooden roller coaster (it was closed though).

View from St. Kilda's Pier

Of course Senor made it to Oz

The entrance to Luna Park

My favorite dumpster ever.

I spent an hour wandering the neighborhood, and then met up with Aoife (pronounced Eee-fah) who is a friend of my friend Angelique in Denver. It was delightful to meet up with her, and I was able to see her home, meet her husband, and her 4 month old son. Aoife is Irish, so was prepping for guests to come over that night for St. Patrick‘s Day celebrations. It was so great to meet someone else living in Melbourne, and we went for a walk along the water and then had cakes in St. Kilda (which is famous for it’s cake shops--unbelievable Mud Cake, let me tell you). Aoife also used to work on tours with bands, and had hung out back stage the previous Friday with the Kings of Leon (did I mention how popular they are here? “Sex on Fire” is a HUGE song in Oz).

I then had to depart to meet Gareth and Sarah at the lawn bowling. What is lawn bowling, you ask? Well basically a fabulous sport that it is a bit like bocce ball, a bit like shuffle board, and like most games, more fun while drinking beer. Notice my best shot of the day:

Basically, you are on this long lawn, and you have two weighted balls, and you try to bowl them to the other end of the lawn and hit the small ball, or get closest to it. There was another group there that day, of about 15 to 20 people all 20 and 30 somethings, but if you go inside, you know this is a sport more reminiscent of VFW Bingo Halls. No wonder I loved it. Note the flair inside the women’s washroom.

That night, since it was St. Paddy’s day, we decided to go to an Irish pub. However, we scrapped that plan when we realized we could go to a Backpacker’s bar that we could ride bicycles to and they were having a St. Paddy’s (how it was spelled here) celebration. We made our way over, but had not had dinner, so that is where we made a poor eating decision--we went to The Meetbowl.

Meetbowl is a “fast food resto” where you get a bowl of meat of your choice, similar to Pho in a lot of ways. In retrospect, when the man behind the counter asked “What kind of fried balls do you want?” I should have known that this was, indeed, a bad choice.

Alas, we ate our Meetbowls, and headed to Bev and Mick’s Backpacking Bar. There I felt like we were spectators at a play--though it was 9 p.m., everyone there seemed to be between 18 and 25 years old, already wasted, and making some poor choices in the type of apparel to wear that night. It was entertaining though, and there was a chap playing mostly Irish rock songs on an acoustic guitar and he got the rowdy crowd dancing even more. There was however, someone there older than us that we befriended:

He was leaving the bar as we asked to take the photo with him, but that did not stop him from asking if either Sarah or I were married. I never did get the story of why he was wearing a neck brace, but he was disappointed to find out that we did not go to that bar often.

We headed back around 11 for the apartment, and considered drinking some OTP (Old Tawny Port) but decided against it. However the next day, we did pass by the Meetbowl again, oh, poor, poor, poor stomachs; just walking past sent ours reeling, but we did get a good pic of Gareth outside of it.