Day #22 & 23 – Good Choices

We’re in Melbourne this week, therefore all you’re going to see for the next seven days is food pictures. I’m just letting you know now so you can’t say I didn’t warn you.

It was super easy to get to where we’re staying in St. Kilda from the airport as the first stop on the shuttle service from the airport to the city happened to be the very top of our road. I’d love to say this was great travel planning and organisation on my part, but it was really just luck. Either way, we were settled in by about 3.30pm, and by 4 Saf was getting peckish. All too familiar with the signs of impending Hanger, I suggested we walk down to the St. Kilda beach front, assuming there would be food shops and/or restaurants nearby.

Weirdly, everything seemed to be closed, whether for the day or for good, we couldn’t tell. So we wandered along the waterfront and the St. Kilda Pier instead, stopping to watch the rows of men with fishing lines compete with seagulls for fish, until we reached the end of the pier which is known for penguin spotting of an evening. We spotted zero penguins, but did notice a macabre pile of dried out starfish instead, which is kind of the same thing.

By this point, Saf’s Hanger was reaching breaking point, so we returned to dry land. I knew we needed to find a grocery store for the essentials (teabags and milk, obviously), so, since the only place that was open was a nearby store, we took home a supper of Turkish bread, French cheese, Spanish ham and Australian cucumbers.

We did have a solid plan for today, however the whole thing went pear shaped fairly quickly when we realised that the market we were going to head to wasn’t open for another two days. Instead, we took a walk to the Top Paddock, a brunch spot we’d been recommended by Saf’s best friend. We walked for about an hour to get there, but it was so worth it. We ordered unremarkable dishes; Saf went for a full breakfast and I ordered Avo on toast, but what arrived can only be described as two works of art. Needless to say we didn’t need to eat again for the longest time.

Once we were both able to move again, we decided to walk to a nearby park just to sit in the sun. Saf was tempted to find the local kayak hire, but the memory of our last watery voyage put an end to that plan.

A little later, we decided to walk back down to St. Kilda beach to make the most of the last 20 minutes of daylight. The sun was already starting to set, and the sky looked beautiful. We sat in a beachside bar which was flanked by giant bronze statues of a hare and a dog (I think they were meant to be the owners??). When the sun had finally gone down we left the beach to go looking for some dinner. Along the way, we passed Luna Park, the most terrifying theme park I’ve ever seen. We’re definitely coming back here at some point.

We stopped for dinner at Kwan’s Table, a Thai place round the corner from where we are staying, which was the best decision we’ve made all day. I went for a soft shell crab burger which I could barely get my teeth around, and Saf chose a lamb curry which he promptly pronounced the best curry he’s ever eaten, which is high praise from a man who eats lamb curry pretty much every week. To finish off, we ordered the crêpe stack cake which, if I’m being honest, I could probably have eaten four times over. It was so fricking good!!! Great food choices all round. Well done us.