We got a very nice call on Friday from our landlord Sandra, who offered to drive us down to the Victoria Market in central Melbourne. This is your classic farmer's market a la the St. Lawrence Market in Toronto only this one is about 10 times the size and includes stalls where you can buy anything from Uggs to goat heads and pate to pumpkins. When and if we feel the need for any chinzy Australia nic nacs, this will also be the place to come. I had my eye on a set of Australia-shaped coasters.
After getting a quick tour from Sandra, Linton and I headed out on our own to explore. We saw some great sweaters, nice shoes, neat toys all displayed wall-to-wall in some fairly chilly outdoor stalls. Finally, we got down to buying some fresh produce and the prices versus the local Safeway were comparable. Then in a moment of complete self-indulgence we wandered into the higher end end and bought beautiful chicken breasts, wonderful pastrami, a creamy blue cheese, chevre wrapped in prosciutto, olives stuffed with sun-dried tomatoes, a nice cabernet sauvignon (more on this later) and a white fish called Gummy Flake that we hoped the kids would like. Suddenly we were enjoying the Victoria Market very much!
The St Lawrence market is known for its peameal bacon sandwiches and the Victoria Market is known for its bratwurst on a bun so we lined up for one of these, sitting with many locals, the pigeons, and a lot of sauerkraut watching the world go by.
A really neat place and another must-do in Melbourne though we think we will only be back when we want to treat oursleves because it doesn't really work on a student budget - or maybe we should leave the prosciutto for someone else!
PS - The wine was interesting in that it was distributed by a company that buys the leftovers from the local wineries and bottles it under its own label.
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