Lecure Recess Part I: Melbourne

We left for Melbourne on Friday night, 8:30 PM. Someone that we don’t even know drove us to the airport; she was going there anyway. Thanks, anonymous transportation provider! Anyway, the flight was somewhat delayed and we didn’t arrive in Melbourne until almost midnight. One fifty-dollar cab ride and thirty minutes later, we were at our hostel, where we had to call the office and wake the owners so that we could get in. It was also very, very cold, something that we did not prepare for at ALL. After two months in the tropics, we’d kind of adjusted to eighty degree days. Melbourne, however, would have nothing of it, insisting on fifty degree temperatures at noon and low forties at night. I was lucky that I brought a sweatshirt, otherwise I probably wouldn’t have any appendages anymore.

Anyway, our first full day was spent walking around. Natalie dragged me around Bridge Road, a nearby shopping district held in high regard by our Lonely Planet guidebook. I bought nothing. Next, we walked to the Royal Botanic Gardens, where we were almost attacked by an overly aggressive black swan, but all was forgiven when we discovered Ferngully. OK, so maybe it wasn’t really Ferngully, but it was an area called “Fern Gully.” (Sorry, adults and other people not named Nora or Grace, that anecdote is mainly an inside joke). By that time, we had probably walked seven or eight miles, so we took a bus back to our room, and took a quick nap before heading to the Vietnamese district (only a few blocks away) for dinner. The street was amazing; there were more Vietnamese restaurants than I’d ever seen in one place outside of Vietnam. My meal was only adequate though, and the spring rolls couldn’t compare to the amazing taste sensation that are the spring rolls of Indianapolis’ Saigon Restaurant. Also, it was here that I began a moderately fruitful quest for two staples of my Vietnam experience: sugared preserved ginger, and yomilk (I eventually found the ginger, but yomilk remains elusive).

But the night didn’t end there. Natalie, who is the queen of planning, had talked to St. Mark’s students about what to do in Melbourne; one of them suggested a trip to the city’s casino. So we headed downtown. Let me tell you: this was one of the strangest, most disorienting moments of my entire life. The Crown Casino is huge; the inside is one of the most garish, sickening, crowded, depressing places I’ve ever been. It represents all that I disagree with about the way people should live their lives and how they spend their money. Natalie lost a dollar in the slot machine, and we bee lined out of there and headed back to the hostel, exhausted.

On Sunday morning we were awakened by the arrival of our good friend Emma, who is studying is Adelaide this semester and was also on break. She had just finished a weeklong trip to Uluru and the outback, and continually regaled us with horror stories of that trip. In the morning, we all checked out the Queen Victoria market, which is an enormous, messy complex where you can buy everything from fresh seafood to touristy t-shirts, fake aboriginal art to donuts, heavily marked down clothing to bongs. Yup. It was rainy and cold, though and even though everything was covered, we made a decision to head to a different market at the Arts Centre downtown. This was a much more interesting one; local artists were selling their work. It was a good place to buy presents, but I didn’t, because I am indecisive. Sorry, everyone.

Our next stop was the Art Museum, where we spent several hours in a unexpectedly lengthy Picasso exhibit that examined his work from 1935-45, as well as his relationship with photographer Dora Maar. Included in the exhibit, among many of Picasso’s own works, were Maar’s photographs on Guernica in progress; the painting itself was one of the first large-scale pieces to be photographed during the creative process, as well as the first in which the final result was directly influenced by these photographs (I think). We had planned to go to the rest of the museum that day, but the Picasso took a lot out of us, and we made plans to come back the next day and see everything else.

That night we made our way to Melbourne’s Little Italy for dinner. What ensued was absurd. As we walked down Lygon Street, examining menus, trying to make a decision on where to dine, we were continually hassled by someone standing outside each eatery. Every place had a person stationed in front of their door who would plug his own restaurant. The conversation usually went something like this:

Guy: “Hello, eat here, it’s very good, you don’t need to go any further. Our prices are reasonable, our food is wonderful.”
Us: “Thanks, but we’re just looking at the moment. We might come back, though.”
Guy: “FIVE DOLLARS OFF ANY PASTA DISH!!!”
Us: “Um, thank you, but we’d like to look at some other places before we make a decision.”
Guy: “Why? We’re clearly the best restaurant on this street. If you go any further, the prices will increase and the food quality will decline.”
Us: “We’d like to see for ourselves, though. Thank you.”
Guy: “FREE GLASS OF WINE!!!!!”
Us: [nervously] “Um, bye! We might come back.”

This happened at literally EVERY restaurant, and eventually we succumbed, just to make the madness stop.

Since we had only seen the Picasso exhibit at the Art Museum, we decided to go back and check out the rest of it on Monday. There was a lot of interesting stuff, but what was almost as impressive as the art was the way in which many of the rooms were designed. They were just really attractive—the whole museum is very well organized. It’s also enormous, and we saw just about everything in it, because Natalie is crazy and wants/needs to see everything in museums. She even wanted to go to the other building where most of the Australian art was housed, but Emma and I both agreed that we had seen enough Art Museum for one day. After lunch, I separated from the girls because they wanted to go back to Bridge Road and buy things. I decided to walk around the area where we had eaten, a several-block stretch of ethnic restaurants, second-hand book and music shops, and weird clothing stores. I bought a hot chocolate with chili powder, which was an experience that, while I’m glad I did it, will probably not happen again. Sweet and spicy is a strange mix.

The next morning we said our goodbyes to Emma (it really was wonderful seeing a friend from home) and walked a short way to Fitzroy Gardens, a smallish but quite beautiful park two blocks from our hostel. The parks is the site of Captain James Cook’s home, which was originally located in England but was purchased by an Australian who transplanted it to Melbourne and then reconstructed it brick-by-brick. I got the feeling, however, that some liberties had been taken in the reconstruction process. Did you know, for example, that the Captain had a fully functioning gift shop in his stable? Me neither.

After the park, it was time to head to the airport. Bob, the owner of the hostel and one of the nicest people I’ve ever met, had arranged a bus to take us there. During our stay he also had given us heaps of suggestions about where to go and what to do in Melbourne, and also let us keep our bags in our room even though check-out time was 9:30 and our flight was not until 2:15. If any of you reading this ever go to Melbourne and want a great, cheap place to stay, the Freeman Lodge is where to go. It was a little cold because our room didn’t have a heater, but it was really a wonderful place.

So: my final thoughts on Melbourne. It was cold, but that can be attributed to the time of year, so I won’t hold that against it. It has a good art museum. The public transportation system is absolutely fantastic. We could buy a full day pass, which could be used on buses, trains, or trams, for A$3.20 (student discount), and would take us to just about anywhere we wanted to go. For the first few days, the city reminded me a little of Seattle, but that might just have been because of the rain and cold, but now I’m not really sure if it compares to anywhere that I’ve been in the US. That can likely be attributed to the fact that I’ve been very few places on my own or with friends, without full-blown adults present, and that really changes one’s perspective on traveling.

Next up: Sydney.

(By the way, I’m fairly confident that this piece of writing is the longest thing I’ve written all semester.)