Sunday, 9/14 - Melbourne

Day 5

Today I went down to the beachfront neighborhood of St. Kilda, an area full of colorful shops, cafes, and restaurants. They also had an arts & crafts market every Sunday, which actually had a lot of cool jewelry and other handmade items.
I spent most of the day window shopping, and after eating my sad sandwich and grapes for lunch I gave into temptation and got a cupcake from one of the many bakeries.
It was a bit chilly/breezy for a pleasant walk on the beach, but it was nice.

Later on I went back up to Fitzroy for a CouchSurfing board game meetup at a cafe/bar/restaurant called Monties. I was late but assumed I was first when I saw no one there..then a foreign-looking guy walked in and went into a private room where there was a big group of people at a long table playing games. I sat at the end where there were some open seats and chatted for a bit with the two guys that arrived at the same as me. One was an Australian who'd just returned from a 3-month stay in South America, the other was a Vietnamese guy who just moved to Melbourne. Some more trickled in (locals mostly) and we had some coffee and started a game of Harry Potter Uno, followed by a Finnish game called Menolippu, which involved building train tracks across an old map of Europe. It was actually fun once we got the hang of it.
For some reason, Monties closed at 5:30 while many of us were still in the middle of our games, so much of the group continued the party down the street at a place called Bimbo. It was a cool place - dimly lit, huge space with lots of sofas and comfy chairs, a DJ playing good disco/funk/soul music, and a huge menu of excellent $4 pizzas. I got one with pumpkin, soy cheese, pine nuts, and rosemary, though I ended up having to wait at least an hour for it. Rather than continue the games we all just hung out and chatted. My giant camera drew all the photography enthusiasts into a conversation and served as a good ice breaker. Philip, one of the CSers I had talked to online previously was one of them, and we spent much of the time playing around with our cameras, switching lenses to experiment. Eventually everyone left while Philip and I were still waiting for our pizzas.

After we finally ate we moved on to a club called the Retreat Hotel in Brunswick where his friend's friend's band was playing. I sat on the back rack of his bike for most of the trip over, which was a bit physically awkward, but he impressively managed to both steer straight and carry on a conversation.
He turned out to be a really interesting guy. He was an engineer of some sort but worked with schools to aid them in becoming more energy efficient. He traveled the world for over a year on an "around the world" ticket, which until now I never knew existed, but sounded like a brilliant idea if you could afford it. I admired the fact that he was in debt but didn't care and figured he could just work now to make up the money.

The Retreat was one of many hotels-turned-clubs in the country that retained the "hotel" portion of its name. It was a large space with an outdoor patio in the back where we met up with Philip's friends, pulling up whatever stools or wooden crates we could find to sit on. Unfortunately we didn't make it in time to see his friend's band, but we caught a glimpse of similar band on the way out - Irish punk style a la Flogging Molly but with fewer people. They were pretty good.

All in all, I was glad to have finally met up with some people.. I didn't see my hosts much after the first couple nights, and hanging out by myself several days in a row was already starting to take its toll on me a bit. But everyone I met was cool and friendly, and it finally gave me the chance to do some things I couldn't do on my own. And it was just nice to interact with people again.