Thursday, 9/11 - Melbourne

Day 2

Since my foam mattress was on the floor, Stumpy got into the habit of crawling into bed and snuggling with me every morning after his master left. He'd usually stay under the blankets until I put the bed away. The house was pretty chilly so I don't blame him. He didn't have much fur and seemed to shiver a lot for a dog.

Rebecca was nice enough to let me use her computer when she was out, so I got into the habit of doing that in the morning, communicating with people and making plans for the weeks to come. I tried to make lunch at home before leaving to avoid eating out. Same cheese and apple sandwiches every day. But you can't go wrong really.

I went into town and hopped on one of the free tourist shuttles that circled around the city center. I feel like this city really caters to tourists - maybe it's just because I was one, but it felt like everywhere I went presented itself to me as if it knew I wasn't from the area. Signs pointing to notable sites, printed informational materials, not one, but TWO free tourist transports in the CBD, the easy-to-navigate grid layout of the city.. Plus everything looked clean and new - not much litter, recycling bins everywhere, no ghetto areas/homeless (yet). The only graffiti I saw was intentional public art. It was kind of refreshing to see it actually being incorporated into the cityscape. I noticed this in a lot of areas throughout the country.
I got off at Lygon Street first, which was the Italian district scattered with some tasty looking restaurants, lots of gelato places, and trendy clothing shops. Sadly I couldn't afford to eat or buy anything, so I just walked around. Rather than give into the temptation for gelato I satisfied my afternoon sweet tooth with a Kinder egg from a little market, which to my disappointment contained some mysterious-looking toy that appeared to be a combination of a boat and a fire engine. Weird, but not really in a cool way.

Next I walked over to Brunswick Street in nearby Fitzroy, the local "artsy", "alternative", or whatever-you-want-to-call-it part of town full of small cafes, bars, and boutique shops. All the buildings were painted in different colors, some with elaborate sculptures for signs, much like London's Camden Lock. Needless to say it had a lot of character. Despite the lack of money I found plenty of shops to browse in and keep me busy til they started closing.

I went back to the house and talked to Jeremy for a bit while heating up my pathetic and grossly underportioned serving of Easy Mac. I discovered he was from Auckland, unemployed but had a ton of savings to live off of, and was into boxing..which was surprising considering how lanky he seemed to be. He seemed like a nice guy, but Rebecca later informed me of his secret life and all his druggie friends back in New Zealand. Well, in either case he was nice.

Rebecca and four of her guy friends returned shortly after and invited me out to the city, so I grabbed my things and we left immediately. We went out to a Chinese restaurant first, which was nice relief from the sad non-meal of tiny macaroni and lumpy powdered cheese I'd had earlier. I sprung for some hot & sour soup and a coconut smoothie, both of which were excellent.
Afterwards we stopped at the sex toy shop at Club X to gawk at some of the better video titles, then headed over to a nearby pub where Rebecca bought me a beer. Good times.