November 15-17

Another short flight, and we're in Melbourne! 

Which, on first glimpse, is pretty uninspiring. The poor place is really suffering from the years-long drought; the park grass is brown and stiff, and the trees just look sad and limp.

Then, our first stop at this town's Queen Victoria Market ...well, let's just say this QVM can't even compared to Sydney's. The tacky was tacky even to this American's eyes, and that's saying something. However, here you can get things made with kangaroo hide, so that's a change. 

Also, you can apparently see a band dressed up as police personnel singing "Poker Face." 

And you can think "oooh, hot American doughnuts" and then get a bag of fat wads of fried dough (NOT in doughnut shape, I may say) with jelly in the middle. 

Gross. If they've been there for 60 years, the folks in Melbourne have been hoodwinked for over half a century.
 
Things got better, though we were still confined to the bus for what was now a routine drive-around; this is the Melbourne Museum.
And this, the Melbourne Conservatory. Nice flowers, nothing overwhelmingly special. A little greener at least than the rest of the city. And a fountain in a drought! 
Nothing could compare to the Shangri-La, but the Sofitel Melbourne on Collins was quite decent.





Melbourne has trams running all around the town, and are an extremely efficient way to get anywhere. This particular tram is a restaurant! 

So we got to eat a lovely dinner on board while driving all around the city. (And this actually was my birthday, so I think I even got a special dessert, which was really nice.)

I am dining with some of my favorite folks from the tour!

And at the bottom: Yes, they served ham, too. Kidding. That's our tour director Kay, singing it up with the head waiter. I think they did a round of "Waltzing Matilda" and "New York, New York."
 
 

 




Next day we had all to ourselves, and the weather wasn't kind but I decided to take the local train system out to the beach area. Also, I'd read that it would let me off near some interesting shopping streets.

This is the train station -- just gorgeous and somehow seeming out of place -- shouldn't this be a depot in Turkey or something?

 




I got off in St. Kilda and did a little wandering around, down to the beach, past more architecture and the Palais Theater. It appears to be active and houses regular live acts, but the whole place -- the Palais was next door to a closed theme park with an entrance that was a clown's open mouth -- had a Peter Straub/Stephen King "The Talisman" feel to it. I scooted, looked for the stores, found a few but nothing impressive, and headed back into town to do more wandering closer to home.

Bottom photo: One of the tram cars!






Look, you go to Australia, you really should check out one of the jails. Or gaols. As they call them. This is the Old Melbourne Gaol, which once housed the notorious Ned Kelly. 

They even had plus dolls of Kelly in the gift store!

I had fun .... maybe a little too much fun.....