sooyindotcom

16 September 2005

We spent the morning at Queen Victoria Market. Personally, I felt that there wasn’t much to see there…just lots of vege, fruits, clothes, the typical souvenier items like koala bears and kangaroos…=) I did have a good time taking some photos though, as the colours of the fruits and vege were so bright and striking! Before leaving, I gave in and bought a box of strawberries…big, huge, red and sweet! Yum!

From QVM, we took a tram down to Lygon Street for lunch at Brunetti. My goodness…you should’ve seen the amount of cakes they have there. It was absolutely mouth-watering! Brunetti spans three shops, with two of the shops selling cakes, cookies and chocolates, while the third shop sells hot food such as lasagna, panini sandwiches, pastries etc. There was a huge crowd at the hot food area and it was all quite disorganized with people just waiting for the waitresses to notice them. We finally managed to catch the attention of one of the waitresses and made our order of bruschetta and ham sandwich. Unfortunately, I made a mistake with the bruschetta…I didn’t know there were two types so when the waitress asked me which type I wanted, I replied ‘vegetarian’. Hmm. Apparently, vegetarian bruschetta consists of zuchinni and some other weird smelling vege that I would never touch with a 10-foot pole. Even hubby, who usually eats anything, took one bite and set it back down on the plate…hehe. We ended up splitting the sandwich instead.

The review for Brunetti recommended the superb hot chocolate, which was the main reason why I chose this as our lunch venue as hubby loves hot chocolate. And boy…the review was right! The Italian hot chocolate (there are two types…the good one is probably the Italian hot chocolate, not the normal one…) was so thick that it flowed down your throat like melted chocolate. I am not a hot chocolate fan as I find that most cafes make it with too much milk causing it to be nauseatingly sweet, but I could’ve finished one glass of this by myself! If you left a piece of dark chocolate in your mouth till it melted, then swallowed the whole mouthful, that’ll be close to how this hot chocolate tasted like!

As for dessert…well, I took a good 10 minutes walking up and down the display selecting my choice. After all, I could only eat one, so I didn’t want to make a mistake…=) I ended up going back to my all-time favourite…the Black Forest, while hubby chose the mini tiramisu. While the cakes did taste good, I had probably set my expectations too high (yeah…after that hot chocolate, who wouldn’t?) and expected a little slice of heaven…=) The Black Forest was made up of a chocolate sponge cake with liquered cherries inside…I was quite disappointed to find that there were very little cherries in the cake as that is usually the best part of eating a Black Forest cake, for me. All in all, the hot chocolate was still the star of the meal!

After lunch, we took a walk down to the University of Melbourne and explored the area. We managed to find the Department of Engineering…hehe…hubby was taking photos along the way, and I was feeling so pei-seh that if anyone asked, I would’ve said that I’m a student there and this is my boyfriend who came to visit me from M’sia…=) The uni campus is really nice…brings back good memories of Warwick. What wouldn’t I give to be back in university again…!

Well, enough reminiscing. That time has come and gone.

We had planned to go to Brunswick Street next, but to our dismay, we, or rather I *blush*, misread the tram route, so the stop that we wanted was quite a long walk down. Well, a little exercise never killed anyone, right? Right?!? =) Actually, I was glad that we took that walk as we went past a row of really pretty houses with very nice steel-work on the fences and balconies. We also passed by Carlton Gardens, and since we had time to spare, we took a walk through the park and managed to get some lovely photos too…

When we left Carlton Gardens, we noticed alot of office folks gathered along one end of the park. Turned out to be a fire drill…what a great excuse to get out of the office on a nice sunny day! Who knows…maybe someone accidentally-on-purpose set off the alarm? *winks*

Finally, we caught the tram and made our way to Brunswick Street. First stop: Crumpler. Actually, Crumpler was located on Smith Street…it looked near when we looked at the map…but it’s actually a really really long walk from Brunswick! Crumpler sells really nice bags, and I was searching for one for my laptop, and another for my camera. The shop has a really amusing way of displaying the bags…you know those plasticky chairs, the ones with a slightly curved bottom? Well, they removed the legs from those chairs and nailed the chair to the wall in rows, and placed the bags on the seat of the chair. Cute! We tested a few of their camera bags, and finally chose the one that could fit both the camera body with the lens attached, as well as an additional lens. There were about seven different sizes of camera bags, going from small to big, and the one we chose was the fourth one (nicknamed ‘The Four Million Dollar Home’…). The bag is water resistant and has an external pocket, an internal mesh pocket and two internal side pockets. It’s padded and has a Velcro flap as well as a clip…so if you’re taking the camera in and out of the bag all the time, having the Velcro flap is really convenient instead of a zip, like hubby’s bag. I choose the light blue colour with a bright orange internal padding…I originally wanted the red one, but when hubby said he won’t carry a bright red bag…well, blue it was! I didn’t manage to buy one for my laptop though…I did see a couple of bags with nice designs, but not in any particular colour that I liked. Oh…and I found out that they do custom designs for some of the bags! It’s really lovely…you get to choose which size of bag you want, the base colour and the design on the front of the bag. They had a book showing the different designs that people have requested for…and I saw this lovely pink and rose coloured one that I just had to have! Unfortunately, custom design takes about a week and of course, the bags cost alot more…oh well. I did manage to speak to the guy who was working on one of the designs, and he showed me some of the ones that he did when he had free time…very nice! Well, maybe next time!

We couldn’t face the long walk back to Brunswick Street, so we decided to take a tram back instead. The first shop that I went into on Brunswick was a stationery shop called Zetta Florence. They stock journals and archival materials, as well as paper, some stationery, cards, etc. The shop has a lovely ambience…the lighting’s a little dim, and the scent from the candle that they burned lightly filled the store with a flowery type of smell. I took a long long time looking through their journals, and finally made a purchase of a pastel green leather journal that had a leather tie-around.

We managed to go to almost all the shops listed on the Luxe Travel Guide, including Kleen, which had lovely and quirky house deco stuff. I also stumbled across a shop named Wilkins and Kent that sold the flower tea that we drank at BTH!! What a surprise! I also found a pair of really nice tea cups at another store…when you fill it up with water (preferably tea or some liquid that has colour), a heart shape would appear due to the design of the cup! By the time I purchased the tea cups and waited for the shop owner to wrap it all up in bubble wrap, it was already getting quite cloudy. We managed to make it to Charmaine’s Ice Cream parlour just in the nick of time though…we took one step through the door and it began raining cats and dogs!

Charmaine’s ice cream was another recommended place to go…apparently, it serves really really good ice-cream. There were quite alot of flavours available, but I predictably went for chocolate and French vanilla. Hubby, however, decided to try the recommended one, ie. the chocolate chilli ice cream. I waited for him to have a taste before asking…
“Hot or not?”
“Not really. Cannot taste the chilli.”
(pause)
“Oh…got chilli aftertaste. Not very hot.”
“Gimme gimme….”
And he was right…it tastes exactly like chocolate. Then when the ice-cream melts and goes down your throat, that’s when the slightly spicy chilli taste kicks in.
“Not very spicy le”
“That’s because you didn’t eat the chilli….”
(evil glare)

As for my plain ol’ chocolate and French vanilla…well, it tasted really good! Very thick. And for a vanilla ice-cream non-fan (it’s such a boring flavour and it usually tastes like Dettol), I found myself really liking this one…very creamy, very…urmm….French. Sexy…if ice-cream could be described as such.

The rain had stopped when we emerged from Charmaine’s, and we took a tram back to Crown’s. We had originally wanted to go for Vietnamese food for dinner, but once you’re back in the warm confines of the hotel room, it’s really really hard to go back out in the cold again! We decided to try Silk, the Chinese restaurant in the hotel instead. Apparently, it’s pretty famous for the Peking duck as well, so I eagerly agreed.

The restaurant was quite full, but we managed to get a table as hubby had called to make a reservation when we came back to the hotel earlier. After perusing the menu, we ordered the Peking duck, in addition to a four-meat appetizer platter, spinach with three types of mushrooms and honey pork. The Peking duck was really weird. In Malaysia, the whole duck is cooked and the skin is removed, and made into oh, maybe 20 pancakes. In this restaurant (or maybe all the Chinese restaurants serving Peking duck in Melbourne??), the dish is firstly sold by pancakes, with a minimum order of four…and the weirdest thing was that the duck meat was also folded into the pancake. Eh?? I really wonder which is the right way of serving it. But imagine if all of Melbourne’s Chinese restaurants serves Peking duck this way…what would an Australian tourist think when he/she visits Malaysia and orders Peking duck and finds the duck meat missing? Hmm….

Anyways, the dish wasn’t all that great. The pancakes were too thick. Quite disappointing, actually. The rest of the dishes were good though…just that the portion was, as usual, huge. I ended up just eating the dishes and leaving my rice untouched. While I didn’t like the four-meat platter very much as I could only eat one our of the four, I totally loved the spinach…the gravy was superb. The honey pork had just the right touch of sweetness, and the pork was really tender.

Full as we were, we still ordered a mango pudding to share. Unfortunately, it didn’t turn out as nice as I expected. And to digress a little…mango puddings never seem to turn out nice in Chinese restaurants. I first ate mango pudding when my ex-boyfriend’s mom made them. And that has still been the best one since. Or maybe the memory of it has made it taste better than every other one that I’ve tried since then…hehe…=) Anyways, we were served four complimentary slices of mooncake with our dessert…hubby managed to eat one. I just kept on groaning and rubbing my bursting tummy….=)

We waddled back to our room…and that was it. End of day 4. Two more full days left…*wails*. Oh…and the strawberries that I bought in the morning had turned into mush thanks to yours truly swinging the plastic bag up and down from Carlton Gardens all the way to Brunswick and back to the hotel. And I was so looking forward to having some…

For more photos, go to Photoblogum!

Want to give these places a try?

Brunetti
194-204 Faraday Street, Melbourne
Tel: 9347 2801

Charmaine’s
370 Brunswick Street, Fitzroy
Tel: 9417 5379

Zetta Florence
197 Brunswick Stret, Fitzroy
Tel: 9417 6211
www.zettaflorence.com.au

Wilkins and Kent
230 Brunswick Street, Fitzroy
Tel: 9419 5251
www.wilkinsandkent.com

Kleen Design Store
296 Brunswick Street, Fitzroy
Tel: 9415 9490