Market Day

Stuart's friend took the kids on the Great Ocean Road, so I went to the Queen Victoria Market, supposedly the biggest in the Southern Hemisphere.

There were oddly enough, crowds.

The usual picturesque vegetable stands and fruit stands.

And mushrooms. A lot of mushrooms and only mushrooms.

Zucchini flowers. Now I know where they get them. They seem pretty reasonable.

An entire honey shop. That seems like an excellent idea.

Helpfully labelled cacti. Perhaps there's a tourist who can't identify them. They're generally pretty friendly around here.

Day old chicks. These drew the kids.

There was also plenty of the usual crap for tourists - not that I'm making light of it as those are the stalls that disappeared my money. I went a bit overboard with soap, forgetting I'd already bought a goodly selection of hemp soaps in Sydney. Whoops!

Leather belts, leather bags, not-leather bags, Hong Kong designer wannabe clothes, tee shirts, toys, fake Coogis, gorgeous merino-possum blend knitwear, olive wood from Bethlehem (wait, what?), soaps, incense, iPhone covers, ugly boomerangs, "Aboriginal" art (the quotes because I'd bet money that they have Thai or some other poorly paid immigrants in a sweatshop making these), really nice Italian leather shoes (which I'm pretty sure were real since I bought a pair in St Kilda the previous day. For $30 more), the usual assortment of Australia-themed pens, oven gloves, calendars, key chains - I could probably go on for another paragraph or two.

Since it was a reasonable walk there, and even though I'd spent many hours wandering around, I decided to walk back, taking the street parallel to the one I'd taken to the market.

There's construction everywhere you look.

I walked for a while and marvelled at how going somewhere always feels quicker than getting back.

I was getting a little tired and then spied an art museum.

Ugh, closed.

And then the road started looking less and less familiar.and then I wondered.

Yup, I'd been going in the opposite direction.

Yay, trams! (I was pretty tired by this time).

There was quite a bit of Lying About With Feet Up (and some failed shopping attempts - nothing looked decent) before the kids eventually got back and we had another delicious meal at a rather weird little restaurant, and then we found an ice cream place with fascinating flavours like sticky rice, taro/yam, lychee and rose, black sesame, as well as the more mundane (yet equally delicious) coconut, green tea, mango, passion fruit, salted caramel and the like.

There's not a ton to do here, but we've eaten extremely well for much cheaper than Sydney.

I'm glad we came.

 

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