As you may know our Aussie Adventures (I should trademark that) went something like this: plane arrival in Sydney, drive to the Blue Mountains, drive to Canberra, drive back to Sydney, from Sydney fly to Cairns, from Cairns fly to Melbourne, and depart from Melbourne to Singapore. We’ve already written about the first half with our Sydney Excursions. A Cairns and Great Barrier Reef post is in the works but I will skip ahead to Melbourne and tell you all about our time there, including the yarn. Especially the yarn. DEFINITELY the yarn. (There was an excessive amount of yarn.)
We arrived in Melbourne airport and made it to the taxi stand. Julie and I were still not aware of what our accommodations but we were told this would be a long drive. It wasn’t too bad, maybe an hour to 45 minutes but it didn’t help that the taxi brought us to the wrong place. We were staying at a “holiday park” as we had now discovered and the taxi brought us to the “rent an RV place.” We said no this wasn’t where we wanted to go and the driver looked a little confused but got back on track. Thankfully the holiday park was right down the road.
Soon after, we woke up and went to get passes for the Melbourne public transit. They have three branches: train, tram and bus. We took the bus into the city and got a free ride, as the card readers were broken. We walked a couple blocks to a tram stop. We sat at the waiting booth thingy and looked at the schedules. As we looked around we noticed other trams going by in the middle of the street. We observed some more signs and realized that the tram stops are in the middle of the street. That’s right!
So we got on the crowded tram and we rode around. The trams that stay in the “free tram circle” are (that’s right) free, so we rode around the circle once. We got on an old-fashioned tram like the ones in San Francisco and it was hot and crowded and we were standing and thirsty. Julie was especially hot and we got off near the end of the circle. We looked around in this complex of shops, a sort of partly outdoor mall, searching for a bottle of water. Finally a spices shop had water-and a/c. We stayed for a while and talked some with the lady there while Julie got rejuvenated. We saw that the store had some hearts of palm (which are very delicious) and when we bought a can, Julie perked right up. Now with Julie perked up Mommy got her phone out and began leading the way. “Take this tram, well that one is probably fine, okay next stop, here we are, a couple more blocks, turn here, wrong way Elizabeth, okay right up here.” She led us straight to a Lincraft store, sort of like a Michael’s.
Mommy and I have been crocheting recently, so she knew I was ready to blow my allowance on yarn. She helped me buy some yarn and a few other things, like embroidery floss and a few smaller sized hooks. I had now perked and we headed on walking. Soon we found our way to a street with many stores and tree sweaters. Yup, the trees were still decked out in their Christmas sweaters. We could even tell that the tree sweaters had been crocheted! It was awesome!
There was also an alley we had heard about that was completely covered in graffiti. It was so cool and great for pictures. The graffiti was everywhere, on garage doors, windows, and everything!
Some more pictures from around Melbourne:
Soon we took an Uber back to our cabin at the holiday park and settled in for the night. But a few days later we headed back to the city and after some time we ended up back at the same Lincraft! We were looking around the store and I was wearing a hat I had crocheted. A lady I didn’t know complimented my hat, and said she liked seeing younger people crocheting. Later the same lady gave us a coupon to the store, saying that she wouldn’t use it anyway and she wanted to encourage me to keep crocheting. She was so generous and we really appreciated it.
Soon we flew out of Melbourne on our way to Singapore, with our bags full of yarn (though between two visits to a craft store, we still forgot the stuffing!).
Blaine Voyage 