In which she goes shopping
Feb. 2nd, 2014 11:19 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
zeborah
After Friday night's penguin adventures I slept in a bit Saturday morning, but still managed to be wandering the shopping precinct a few minutes before everything opened at ten. So for a few minutes there I was thinking Melbourne was a startlingly sleepy little town of a weekend.
Shops seen include the magic shop which is adorable but most of the stuff for sale seemed to be little tricks of the whoopee cushion variety (not saying I don't have fond memories of the whoopee cushion); teddy bear shop ("for every bear that ever there was"; an intriguing number of jerky shops; a pen shop and a bookbinding shop and cupcake shops and chocolate shops and all the clothes and shoe shops.
While I was in the complex that is Melbourne Central Station I also visited the Shot Museum. Because when you're a developer and want to build a giant shopping mall but there's a really tall heritage building in the way what you do apparently is enclose it in a giant glass dome and build your shopping centre around it. The museum is in the back of one of those clothes shops that sells manly clothes for manly men.
After a two-hour wander over a half-hour distance I ate my lunch in the park where I was mobbed by flies so small at first I thought they were mozzies. They're not quite that small but they're about halfway between mozzie size and proper Kiwi fly size. Then I went to see the exhibition in the Bunjilaka Aboriginal Cultural Centre in the Melbourne Museum - as well as the more permanent looking displays they were showcasing a project where about thirty kids around Melbourne got to work on making traditional possum skin cloaks.
So a couple hours later I came out and wandered through what looked like a Russian (or possibly more generically Slavic) cultural festival; at least the stall where I got pancakes and a drink of mors was fundraising for the local Russian Orthodox Church. Some incredibly staunch people wearing traditional clothes designed for Russian temperatures were dancing in temperatures that made the more sensible seagulls sit down in the shade of the trees in the park to rest.
I decided I was done walking so found the free city loop tram and sat there until I found an interesting looking stop, which happened to be the Lightning Ridge Opal Mines store. It was fairly quiet and the shop assistant gave me a lesson in varieties of opals (using the game of "Guess which one's $60, which is $600, and which is $6000") and let me hold a big lizard. I'm now pondering. (I'm definitely not going to get the $6000 one, gorgeous as it was.)
Wandering back from there through the lanes, which are a lot cooler than the roads because the sun doesn't reach all the way down, I stumbled across the city library. And a few shops near to the "dollar shop" style variety.
And then I got back to the hotel and crashed for the evening. Until I wanted internet and discovered the hotel's "30 free minutes per day" day runs from midnight to midnight instead of checkin to checkin, so then I wandered out to a spot where the map said had free wifi, and lo! there was free wifi and it was glorious.
(The sore throat is too long-lived without other symptoms to be a bug, and I've been drinking water fairly constantly so it's not dehydration per se, so definitely blaming the air conditioner.)
Shops seen include the magic shop which is adorable but most of the stuff for sale seemed to be little tricks of the whoopee cushion variety (not saying I don't have fond memories of the whoopee cushion); teddy bear shop ("for every bear that ever there was"; an intriguing number of jerky shops; a pen shop and a bookbinding shop and cupcake shops and chocolate shops and all the clothes and shoe shops.
While I was in the complex that is Melbourne Central Station I also visited the Shot Museum. Because when you're a developer and want to build a giant shopping mall but there's a really tall heritage building in the way what you do apparently is enclose it in a giant glass dome and build your shopping centre around it. The museum is in the back of one of those clothes shops that sells manly clothes for manly men.
After a two-hour wander over a half-hour distance I ate my lunch in the park where I was mobbed by flies so small at first I thought they were mozzies. They're not quite that small but they're about halfway between mozzie size and proper Kiwi fly size. Then I went to see the exhibition in the Bunjilaka Aboriginal Cultural Centre in the Melbourne Museum - as well as the more permanent looking displays they were showcasing a project where about thirty kids around Melbourne got to work on making traditional possum skin cloaks.
So a couple hours later I came out and wandered through what looked like a Russian (or possibly more generically Slavic) cultural festival; at least the stall where I got pancakes and a drink of mors was fundraising for the local Russian Orthodox Church. Some incredibly staunch people wearing traditional clothes designed for Russian temperatures were dancing in temperatures that made the more sensible seagulls sit down in the shade of the trees in the park to rest.
I decided I was done walking so found the free city loop tram and sat there until I found an interesting looking stop, which happened to be the Lightning Ridge Opal Mines store. It was fairly quiet and the shop assistant gave me a lesson in varieties of opals (using the game of "Guess which one's $60, which is $600, and which is $6000") and let me hold a big lizard. I'm now pondering. (I'm definitely not going to get the $6000 one, gorgeous as it was.)
Wandering back from there through the lanes, which are a lot cooler than the roads because the sun doesn't reach all the way down, I stumbled across the city library. And a few shops near to the "dollar shop" style variety.
And then I got back to the hotel and crashed for the evening. Until I wanted internet and discovered the hotel's "30 free minutes per day" day runs from midnight to midnight instead of checkin to checkin, so then I wandered out to a spot where the map said had free wifi, and lo! there was free wifi and it was glorious.
(The sore throat is too long-lived without other symptoms to be a bug, and I've been drinking water fairly constantly so it's not dehydration per se, so definitely blaming the air conditioner.)
