The room was as we expected it – small, serviceable, and clean. Personally, I find it rather amusing that 8 months into our marriage we are already relegated to tiny separate beds and alarmingly unromantic and celibate bedrooms. But such is the rule of the hostel. We did have a room to ourselves, and the hostel facilities were well-appointed and quite tidy (the pillows were exceptionally flat, I must add – any flatter and they would have been concave). As soon as the beds were made, we fell into them and proceeded to sleep for a good three hours.
Upon waking, we decided that food was in order. As we wanted to establish our own supply of groceries in the hostel refrigerators, we asked the receptionist where the nearest grocery store was. She directed us to a little neighbourhood supermarket, but said that we would do much better to walk to the Queen Victoria Market. Being a farmer’s market, the produce and meats would be far more varied and superior in quality.
Taking her advice, we hiked the two kilometers or so to the market. Our first sight of it prompted a rather embarrassing squeal of delight from me – the first stall had live quail, ducks, and chickens for sale, all ready for laying eggs. Melbourne is one of those enlightened municipalities that allow for homeowners to keep a couple poultry in their backyard for the purpose of gathering fresh eggs. I’m currently harbouring an obsession with backyard chickens, so this discovery was quite delightful. This same stall also had an excellent selection of very fresh free-range eggs, of which we bought six.
Once we passed by this egg stand, it started to sink in just how enormous this market is. We had landed in the produce section, which was enough to make any vegetarian’s head spin. The variety and price of the produce was exceptional – avocados were three for a dollar, local pineapples were two dollars apiece, mushrooms came in dozens of varieties. The strawberries were a little tired looking, but we came across ‘sweet honey’ oranges that smelled so delicious that we bought four for immediate consumption. And joy of joys, the oranges were full of seeds. These are not the seedless variety that populate Canadian grocery stores – those sterile, unnatural globules that are transported a ridiculous distance and taste of nothing except pure citric acid and water. These oranges were bursting with seeds and were so flavourful and juicy that we drooled quite shamelessly as we snarfed them down.
We mainly bought fruit and mushrooms, and a chunk of very savory cheese. Tomatoes were, alas, out of the question as recent weather conditions have caused most of the tomato crops to fail and the prices to skyrocket. All over the produce market the voices of the vendors could be heard shouting, shouting, shouting their wares and prices to anyone walking by. This was somewhat overwhelming for both Glen and I, who are accustomed to the relatively non-aggressive farmers markets of Edmonton. It was quite interesting, though, to hear the goods being advertised at the highest lung capacity the vendors could muster. Next to the produce was the clothing section, of which we had little interest. Crossing the street, we came upon the meat and seafood section, which is housed inside a long, low building to accommodate the need for meat coolers.
If we thought the noise in the produce section was surprising, it was nothing compared to that of the meat market. In here the vendors didn’t just shout, they bellowed, holding out large trays of meat and thrusting handfuls of sausage links over the tops of their counters. The vendors yelled, the customers yelled, and the entire place swarmed like a hive, making it difficult to wend our ways down the aisles. As it was nearing the end of the market day, many vendors were dropping their prices extremely low to ensure swift sales and screaming the sale prices at peak volume; clearly the end of the day is the ideal time to purchase meat at the Queen Victoria Market. We came across one silent stall that bore the proud sign "We don’t yell to sell" – they must have been the only ones. After making a loop of the entire meat section, we went back to the first stall we saw and bought a kilo of lamb cubes.
From there we went to the deli/sweets/breads area. We found a butter vendor and got some really excellent butter, then attempted to find a bread vendor. Bread appears to be the one item in the Queen Victoria Market that is in relatively short supply. It is possible that we missed the main strip of bread sellers, but we only found a couple of stalls that had anything to offer, and they were busy shutting down. We did manage to nab a loaf of dark rye that looked remarkably similar to a big loaf of chocolate cake. Chocolate cake and any other variety of cake was far more accessible than bread; apparently Aussies have a well developed sweet tooth.
Having purchased what we needed, we wandered around the market for a few more minutes than headed back to the hostel. Now here is one of the most remarkable peculiarities of Melbourne that we have encountered: once we got away from the marketplace, the city appeared to be deserted. We could have counted on one hand the number of people we passed during the entire walk. It was like a ghost town and was actually rather unsettling. I half expected to see a zombie staggering down the street in quest of fresh brains.
Upon our return to the hostel, we had a pretty basic late lunch consisting mostly of rye bread and cheese. And then we lost the remainder of the day. How, you may ask? By going to bed at quarter to five in the afternoon with the intention of having another short nap and not waking up again until three thirty in the morning.
Yes, folks, a mere three hours after a three hour nap, we succeeded in clocking another 10 hours of sleep. When we woke up at 3:30 am, we grumped a bit about waking up so early, rolled over, and fell back asleep until 6:00.
It does seem reasonable that after nearly two days of flights and very little sleep we would be in need of a few extra hours of shut-eye. But 16 hours in a 20 hour period? Where did the day go?
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