Gallery Update—St. Kilda

Following the last post on the Melbourne beach resort cum suburb of St. Kilda, I went in and updated the gallery to include so more St. Kilda pictures.

Sunday at St Kilda

(What I’m going to attempt to do this week is to go through some of the major events that have happened since being here so I can work on being a little more current, interspersed with some anecdotal/random posts)The Sunday before classes started a friend from AustraLearn, Victoria, and I took a tram ride down to St Kilda—the closest beachside resort for Melbourne. Of course, in typical Melbourne style (or at least the Melbourne I know) it rained for most of the morning before trying desperately to break through to sun in the afternoon. The actual purpose of the trip was to go to the Sunday artist festival but because of the rain not many of the artists showed up, so we did the town, beach and pier.
As you get into St Kilda you’re greeted by a giant face, creepy amusing scary it covers them all and it also fronts Luna Park which looks eerily like Coney Island in New York (in fact its modeled after it)—a mini amusement park. There was also one of those human statue people, interesting enough, took a picture. Getting past that you hit the sand, and your first good shot at the sea. And while it is technically still inside the Melbourne harbor due to two giant peninsulas that leave a singular 5 km straight, the feel is still the seaside. The sand was crisp and the water was…ABSOLULTY FREEZING. Turns out the Melbourne Sea, like everything else in Melbourne in winter, is cold and wet. We made our way along the pier (apparently pretty famous) up to the end where there are supposedly little fairy penguins (we didn’t see any—only a load of dead starfish and a couple of fishermen). There’s a reserve up the end for these little critters, and they’re apparently joined with some sort of, and what can only be described as a, sea otter (rakali). We walked into the café on the end of the pier, partially to warm our hands and partially to see the prices—to expensive.
We went back into town to find something a little more pocket friendly and stumbled upon several very good looking cake shops (identified by crowds of people drooling on store fronts). There were lots of other small shops along the street, all small personal business each with their own little culture. I had no idea what the one pictured to the right is selling but it had an awesome shop front. Taking a hot pie and a cup of tea from one of the delicious-looking cake shops, it was just right for the cold weather and rain, and with that the sun began to come out. Yay! With the sun came more people including a couple of people rollerblading—one of whom wiped out spectacularly. St Kilda’s is literally filled with scenic beauty and hinted with grunge attitude. It would probably be a lovely place to live, though we went in the middle of winter and I can only imagine how crazy this place must get in the middle of summer.