Today, Lexi and I woke up craving some fresh produce, so we headed to the Queen Victoria Markets, which were about a ten minute walk from our hostel. I bought kiwis, grapefruits, oranges, bananas, carrots, raw nuts, and a box of muesli—all this for about $6. For the rest of the morning, we had the great fortune to take a tour of Melbourne by a born and raised Melbournian, Matt. The tour lasted about an hour and a half and there was a lot of information to share with us, so he spoke and walked quickly in order to get the most in as possible. He started off by sharing some history with us about Melbourne. It was originally inhabited by indigenous people, but the Europeans arrived in about 1835. The leader of the settlement was John Batman and Melbourne was almost going to be named Batmania, which would have been awesome. Even more interesting is that he had had syphilis and was ashamed of what he looked like and did not allow anyone to paint him so no one knows what he looks like—they can only guess.
Melbourne is known to be a very artsy city, so as Matt took us to different areas of the city, we walked through alleyways covered in colorful and intricate graffiti. As long as the graffiti artists receive a permit from the owner of the building, then it is actually completely legal and has quite a big following by the locals. When we weren’t looking at the graffiti in the alleyways, Matt showed us through Queen Victoria Village, Greektown, Chinatown, the CBD (Central Business District—what Australians call “downtown”), the Royal Arcade, the Central Arcade, the Block Arcade, Federation Square, and then across the bridge to the Melbourne Art Museum.
After the tour, a group of about ten of us decided to take the free tour bus back to the Queen Victoria Markets (round two for me), which are open every day (but Monday and Wednesday), and the stands sell a variety of things ranging from extremely fresh produce to souvenirs. First, we went straight to the food court area for lunch. I ate a surprisingly light Indian vegetable and potato curry with naan bread—extremely delicious meal, I had to restrain myself from licking the plate. After lunch, we walked around the souvenir stands and did a little bit of shopping. Once Kaitlyn, Dana, and I had seen enough of the market, we headed back to the downtown shopping area of Melbourne and traced back the steps of our tour in order to find a couple of stores we had seen and wanted to return to.
We surprisingly were able to trace back our steps perfectly and stopped to do some shopping; the most notable of which was Haigh’s Chocolates in the Block Arcade. We probably spent an hour there looking at all of the variety of chocolates. Every type of nut and fruit was sold covered in white, milk, or dark chocolate or in bar form. When it came to ordering the individual chocolates, we had an absolute field day. The lady that attended to us was an absolute gem and gave us over $30 of chocolate to sample—milk chocolate coconut, milk chocolate banana caramel, dark chocolate almond crème, dark chocolate marzipan, dark chocolate passion fruit crème, milk chocolate macadamia honey, and so many more. At the end of tasting all of those, I decided upon dark chocolate covered scorched almonds, milk chocolate macademias, dark chocolate marzipan, dark chocolate pastilles with sprinkles, and an assortment of truffles. Don’t worry; all of these were gifts for my family (which I am totally planning on ‘sampling’ once they open them).
After a long day of shopping, we returned back to the hostel to change for dinner. That night the group decided to grab dinner downtown and then go to a bowling alley that we had seen on our tour. For dinner, we went to Grill’d, a healthy burger joint. I had a roasted pumpkin, quinoa, and rocket salad with lentil patty on top. I hadn’t even been hungry after eating all of those chocolates, but the second I my food came, I devoured it. When we finished eating, we headed to Strike, a bowling alley located in the mall that had a special that night of $8 per person for one game of bowling and $8 per person for a game of laser tag. By some miracle of God, I bowled the highest score out of the people in my lane so I was feeling pretty accomplished. On top of that, it was such a fun night to be out with all 20 of the students in the program and spend time together doing something casual and laidback.
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