Distance covered: 50km (approx. - entire day)
Today was the first day with a different pace and a different purpose. I allowed myself a sleep-in until 7:23 (very precise, I know), but was awake before this time, after discovering that Melbourne is also cold at this time of year.
With the sun streaming down, thoughts of the chilly night were quickly demolished. I set off for a simple ride into the heart of the city to meet a friend for lunch.
Following the coast road from Edithvale until past St Kilda, traffic was light, the sun shone and the blue water glistened. Most pleasant, all in all.
I stopped off for my first coffee for almost two weeks along the way, and covered the 30-odd kilometres to the centre in about two hours.
As I was early for lunch, I rode around the eastern part of the centre that I don't really know at all, even though I have been to Melbourne a fair amount.
One of the nicer aspects of scooter riding in Melbourne is the parking. As long as one does not obstruct passengers of vehicles parked on the road from being able to get out or block pedestrians, parking on the footpath is both permissible, but encouraged. In other words, finding a park is rarely difficult, and I was able to park just around the corner from my friend's workplace.
A nice lunch on the banks of the Yarra later, I set off towards Brunswick Street to have a look around an area that I haven't spent any time in during recent visits to the city.
Whilst Brunswick Street itself has gentrified somewhat since I first visited the city in 1994, Smith Street, a few streets to the east, was more to my liking, and I spent the afternoon resisting buying anything - particularly in a fantastic secondhand shop full of items that I'd have been hard pressed to leave behind, were it in Adelaide.
I really like Melbourne - especially the inner suburbs that still have that slightly grimy feeling to them. By 'grimy', I mean the areas that haven't been renovated or redeveloped into oblivion, thereby losing the charm that made the suburbs so appealing to begin with. There is a rawness that no other city in Australia has.
As much as I love living in Adelaide - the lifestyle is hard to surpass (and definitely not for the relative cost) - Melbourne has a certainly something that nowhere else in the country has. Each time I come here, I seriously consider whether I shouldn't move here. Then I start thinking about the lifestyle that I have in Adelaide and how it would drop, were I to earn a similar income to what I do in Adelaide in Melbourne. And that usually kills the thought pretty quickly.
Today it hasn't killed it. Yet. That may still come. As I still have almost two weeks until I have to return to work, I'm considering extending my stay in Melbourne a little longer than I had planned to. Will think about it overnight.
It was pointed out to me today that I haven't been dedicating photos any longer. In order to rectify this situation, I dedicate the following image to the Linux users (of whom I am one) reading my blog. In answer to the question, "Does it run Linux?", in the case of this hand-dryer in the toilets on Federation Square, the answer is, "Yes, it does."
The console screen on the dryer cracked me up :)
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