Text 9848, 89 rader
Skriven 2007-01-01 11:31:00 av MICHAEL LOO (1:123/140)
Ärende: queen victoria 797
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Next morning the plan was to get up bright and early, take
the tram to Queen Victoria Market, have breakfast, and do
the Foodie's Dream tour, which is offered (not cheaply) by
the city's tourism bureau. The tram stop is right by the
hotel door; a single ticket, good for two hours, is $3.20,
but a day pass is just double that. We did the day passes
for both our full days.

We wandered around the market for a good long time, but I
didn't see anything promising for breakfast, which put
Carol out a bit, because the carrot for getting up early
was breakfast (a meal I don't care for). I said that she
was perfectly entitled to breakfast, just don't make me
eat it with her, but she said that part of the fun was
actually eating breakfast with ME. So eventually I relented
and got a chicken leg quarter from one of the stalls, and
she found the supposedly award-winning Pida Bakery, which
sold her a very improved version of a McMuffin -  eggs and
bacon on a Turkish roll, actually pretty good, if a little
greasy. I should have gotten a half chicken for a buck
more, as it was very tasty. Wandered a bit more through the
nonfood part of the market before it was time to meet at the
tourist office: turned out the clientele this day was 4 of
us outlanders and 2 Australians, both, coincidentally, from
Perth, including a blind woman here for some kind of
conference of blind people. Our guide was clearly more of a
history person than a food person, and we were regaled with
the dates of founding of each part of the market, when each
building was constructed, how many stalls there were, dating
from when, and so on. She put her game face on when talking
about the actual food, but a lot of her commentary was on
the order of "do you know that some people actually eat
kidneys?" The price of the tour includes a large number of
mostly rather ordinary samples, bits of buffalo, emu, and
kangaroo, several kinds of tapenade, cheese ravioli with
pesto, that kind of thing. The only notable taste was of
an organic pineapple from a stand run by someone named
Carruthers or Cunningham or something who used to be a
chef but couldn't find the ingredients he wanted so became
a greengrocer instead. Another stand had sample pineapples
as well, but I was the only one who backtracked to compare
tastes. The organic one was the sweetest I'd ever tried.
Oh, yes, next to the tapenade stand there was a guy giving
samples of a really quite nice Cheddar - but as this was
not on the list, our guide ignored him: I did not. The
last of the dozen or so tastings was at Swords, a wine
bottler; I tried a decent Chardonnay as well as a Viognier
that lacked any character at all. I was all ready to
continue on to a Semillon, but the guide said that as the
tour was over we had to return to the food hall to claim
our free coffee and could come back for more tastings later.
I have no use for coffee and was offered a hot chocolate;
asked for a cold chocolate (which I imagined would be a
hot chocolate only over ice) only to be told that it was
a buck fifty extra. I forked it over and found myself the
proud owner of a large glass with chocolate milk and a
scoop of ice cream on top. Ah, well, it was good, and I
had my pills with me.

Carol had noticed a soap store, so we just had to go back
there; bought some bath salts with not too floral scents
so I could tolerate them; these were destined for the
bathtub at the hotel, which doubles as a spa.

We had noticed that The Earth from Above, Yann Arthus-
Bertrand's show of aerial photographs that we'd seen in
Paris some years ago, was at River Terrace, so we went to
the main tourist office to inquire where that was, to
discover that it was but a block away, toward the river
(duh). There were some new photos interspersed with many
of the most beautiful or meaningful ones from the original
show. A lovely, warm but not hot day, and this was an
interesting contrast to our previous experience of it,
at night in the winter halfway around the world.

We took some random trams to get glimpses of city life and
wasting time before the Victorian Microbreweries Showcase
- also within a few steps of that well-situated tourist
office! Didn't discover much of interest as we went through
the university district and then the eastern suburbs. But
the trip did its job, getting us back to the Atrium nice
and thirsty. For $20 you get 20 tasting tickets (our routine
is to share tastes, so we got 40 of the 50 or so brews
available). Started off slow at 4, but as the workday ended,
the event became more crowded and boisterous.

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