Saint Kildas

This morning I got up early and went for a run along the river here in Melbourne and found out very quickly that rowing is a big sport here. I must have passed 60 or so rowing skulls with anywhere from 1 to 8 people in them, most of them cruising along casually but a few obviously training for some sort of competition. There is a boat club 2 blocks from the hostel I'm staying in and they were constantly loading or unloading boats onto the racks when I passed both times. The sun slowly came up and it looked like it was going to be a gorgeous day but within the hour it clouded over and has stayed like that all day.

I took the tram (their word for streetcar) to St. Kilda's, a small beach hotspot about 30 mins away and spent the majority of the day there. It worked out perfectly because on Sundays they have their weekly market booths set up along the main drag so I got to see some neat local artifacts and carvings. I was amazed at some of the things people can make with their own two hands, but unfortunately most of them were much to large to take along with me. I then headed to their botanical gardens which turned out to be nothing special and moved on to the beach which was absurdly cold with the clouds and heavy winds. I decided to go with flipflops and shorts today and regretted it pretty quickly when I got off the tram. Reading up about St. Kilda's before going I had heard they were famous for their cake shops and realize why. A string of about 8 or 9 bakeries lined the Promenade beach street and had cakes that would entice anyone around, I settled on 2 different ones but could have easily kept going....

I am back at the hostel now and am going to cook up dinner and head out to the main square (can't remember its name) where I went last night before heading to bed. They have a massive jumbotron set up on one of the sides of the buildings where they had an Australian Football League game playing. It was awesome, a huge crowd turned up and it got very vocal to the point of a near-fight. Definitely going to check it out again, I'm slowly learning the rules of the game and am supposed to see a game live in Perth when I head there this weekend.

The next 2 days I'll just be touring around the downtown core and hope to see as much as possible.