Day 1 in Melbourne

Day 1 in Melbourne!
1st May 2009, Friday

The problem was, morning came slightly earlier than expected for 3 reasons:

1) Melbourne is GMT+10, (SG is GMT+8), so day would come 2 hours earlier,

2) day breaks earlier in Australia, and the sun sets earlier consequently - about 2 hours faster than in Singapore. What this means is that day breaks about 3 - 4am in Singapore time, which is about 5 - 6am Australia. Night falls by about 6.30pm, which means it's completely dark by 7pm.

3) They awoke to the sound of children running around the house. Usually this would freak Adal out since he doesn't live with children, but in this case he was listening for his little cousin's (Jemima's) voice.

It was really pleasant to be able to wake up to a frosty morning without having to have 4 jack russells barking at you. Adal and Adel were invited to help themselves to the bread in the pantry, and they toasted 2 pieces of raisin and nuts bread, which tasted quite good, mainly because they were really thick.

Aunt Ruth came back from bringing the kids to school, and drove A&A up to Mount Dandenong. The ride took about 45 minutes to an hour, but it was very interesting for A&A as it was the first time they were able to see wide sprawling plains and see the sky and mountains instead of seeing buildings and buildings all around. Plus, the weather was REALLY FANTASTICALLY COLD and therefore enjoyable for Adel but quite an interesting experience for Adal (i.e. freezing).

Road to Sassafras, Mount Dandenong

Sassafras is a suburb of Mount Dandenong, and is home to several Devonshire Tea shops. But Aunt Ruth was also bringing them up to look for other stuff too!

The Best Pie Floater East of Adelaide - The Pie in the Sky! Apparently, this award winning pie shop located in Olinda is well known by most locals. The secret to their success is really their flaky crust and the way the fillings stay warm and juicy even as the crust stays tasty and flaky.

Eating in will give you mashed potatoes, gravy and peas, which will cost slightly more than taking away, which will only give you the pie. A&A are now completely hooked on the pies!

Barely containing the drool

After the meal, we went for a short walk around the area.

Cool streets

We went into this quaint shop that sold all sorts of interesting stuff from masquerade masks, clocks, compasses, antique furniture and all sorts of aboriginal and wooden items that were fascinating and beautiful.

These are actually wooden containers with magnetic clasps - the cover of the 'book' would open to reveal some storage. Secret Stashes of money for the Missus, perhaps?

Along the way, they visited a charming toy shop selling wood-crafted toys and so on, and visited a cosmetics shop where Adel bought a delicious smelling Rose Champagne cream. The cosmetics shop had a unicorn in it's shop front! But Adal didn't take a picture of the unicorn because he was afraid he would be caught doing unmanly things in a foreign country. He's weird that way.

The walking gave them quite an appetite, and Aunt Ruth brought them to an English-cottage-themed coffeehouse called "Ms Marples". Ms Marples was actually a detective featured in Agatha Christie's novels, and the shop is named after her. The shop is famous for its Devonshire Tea, and in an area which features numerous Devonshire teaplaces, it's quite an accomplishment. Devonshire Tea consists of 4 basic elements, Clotted Cream, Jam, Scones and Tea - Ms Marples' clotted cream is foamy and soft, it's Raspberry Jam handmade, and its scones freshly baked and warm (and LARGE), coming in both fruit and plain flavours. They tasted like butter cake, actually.

The tea, Adal decided, was very nice, with a sweet fragrance and none of the acidity found in lipton teas. He bought a packet of it, as well as the Jam.

Happy couple in Ms Marples'

Menu

Tea, Scones, Jam and cream! Traditional English Tea?

Barely containing the drool again

After the lunch and tea, they went with Aunt Ruth to fetch Bryce and Jemima from their school and the rest of the afternoon was spent playing with Jemima and unpacking.

In the evening, Uncle Keith dropped them both off at Knox shopping centre as they had a dinner appointment, and Adal bought a thick woolen set of clothes which he wore throughout the vacation.

Adel wanted to get some boots, but was worried that she wouldn't be able to wear them in hot and humid Singapore (or that if she did, she would soon regret it anyway). They had dinner in the Knox food court, which was a very interesting concept - instead of the various stalls selling foods in the food court like in Singapore, the Australian food court concept consists of having various food establishments like Subway, Oporto (the OZ burger concept), Macdonald's, KFC, Hungry Jack's (Burger king in Singapore) etc all put together to form an amalgamated food place.

Adel went for the chinese food, while Adal wisely tried something local (his experience was that Chinese food in most countries are sadly tasteless, or in some unfortunate cases, too full of taste), and the choice proved right. The plate of chow mein Adel bought (as she wanted something hot) proved tasteless and greasy, while the dumplings she bought tasted quite alright though the chilli was shockingly salty. In fact, if it didn't look like chilli sauce, Adal would have mistaken it for a creamy and disgusting salt condiment. Adal had the chilli wrap, which was quite ok.

A&A enjoyed strolling in the cold weather very much. All in all, a very interesting day!