Saturday

Queen Victoria Market

Saturday, Part I: DoubleOh and I had a great trip to the Journal cafe yesterday morning, despite our guidebook failing to mention it is in the same building- no more than 10 feet away from the entrance of the City Library in downtown Melbourne. I ordered a latte and banana muffin, he got some English breakfast tea nonsense. Coffee here, as I mentioned previously, comes in a smaller portion then I'm used to, but costs about the same. So my little latte lasted about one minute. (It took a lot of willpower not to order a second one...impressive, I know). The reading material at Journal was eclectic if you consider fashion mags, encyclopedias, and National Geographic more eclectic than this. We sat against some cushy leather benches enjoying our goodies as I enthusiastically observed that this would be a comfortable place to study while simultaneously stealing longing glances at the City Library entrance. I finally went in and applied for a library card and looked around briefly. I'll definately go back when I have more time.

I'm not sure how this happened, but we found ourselves walking to Royal Park, intending to quickly stop by Queen Victoria Market to grab some cheese, bread and fruit for a picnic lunch. We ended up wandering around the open air Market, a vast group of tents where people were selling tourist trinkets, cheap clothing, and a huge selection of fresh produce- apples, grapes, oranges, corn, potatoes, lettuce, tomatoes- it was the most produce under a tent I've ever seen. Tough grocers shouted their specials from behind wood stands. We eventually found some bread, salami, and cheese. Doubleoh assumed we were done but of course I wanted more coffee...so I walked up to a booth and ordered a Vienna style coffee because it had 'cream'. Well, I discovered 'cream' means whipped cream, not creamer as I anticipated. From my grocery store trips and this experience, I've concluded that creamer just doesn't accompany a cup of coffee here. I burned my tongue while trying to walk to the park and threw the coffee out after the whipped cream had all melted. Then we walked, walked, walked to the park which we had both pictured as more of a garden with lush green, manicured grass, flowering plants and bushes, and perhaps a lake. Instead we saw brown, brown and more brown.

When we finally found a bench and sat down we faced a brown grass field with wire fence around it. A lone drinking fountain sat a few yards away. As we ate lunch, a woman talking on a cell phone and walking three mean-looking black dogs came by and stood with her back to us chatting on her phone while her dogs tried to devour our food. She ignored us when we tried to get her attention. Finally, she and her pesky dogs left. Five minutes later, a different, smaller, dog ran up, peed right beside Mark's legs and then covered it, kicking up a cloud of dirt on Mark in the process. Shortly after, we caught a tram and came home. To be continued...