Shopping

We started the morning at the Queen Victoria Markets. All the guidebooks to Melbourne say they're not to be missed, though for a while I was beginning to think I'd misread several of them because the markets were full of Chinese junk, the sort of crap Ella loves rifling through.

So having relieved us of $5 for a Chinese digital watch (from which she repeatedly informed us it was a quarter past four), we were looking for a swift exit route and finally stumbled uopn the delicatessen section, where all our foodie dreams came true amongst the french cheeses (St Agur $65 per kilo, much cheaper than in Sydney), polish kabanos, lebanese dukkah and German patisserie stalls. The place was awash with eastern European housewives in headscarves dragging their shopping trolleys full of fruit and veggies and fish. If we lived in Melbourne I'd most certainly be joining them three mornings a week, tartan shopping trolley and all.

Anyway after that we found the Block Arcade, where we had a delicious lunch in a laneway cafe (more about the laneways later) and I sat watching the world go by and proclaiming I could live in Melbourne because the people walking past all looked different. Different how? Different good; I just couldn't put my finger on it.

Pictures:

(1) The Block Arcade
(2) Chocolate snowmen in Haigh's Chocolate Shop. But where's the snow?