Melbourne Trip, Day 2 – Pho, Fish, and home time

Ducking around the poodles, groodles, and other abracadoodles wearing little puffer jackets we headed inside and ordered some delicious snacks. Had I written this closer to the time, I would probably remember what it was. By cheating and looking at the photos, I can tell there was egg involved and a mushroom.

Also Erin got an apple juice which was amazing and tasted exactly like they’d just taken some apples, and made it juice. This stands out by comparison to most “apple juice” products you get at local cafes which taste more like they pulled out the cheapest reconstituted apple flavoured concentrate syrup they could buy, added some water, and begrudgingly some ice, and then hit you up for $9.50.

I’ll say one thing for Melbourne – they do good food, and good coffee. Its just a shame they only do it for like 4 hours a day.

After filling our little tumtums, it was time to do something Erin wanted to do – and that was obviously an aquarium. If there’s one thing she likes more than museums, it’s aquariums.

We walked from the cafe to the SEA LIFE Melbourne Aquarium which involved crossing a bridge (Melbourne does love a good bridge) and walking under train tracks near a train station at which point we weren’t mugged. It definitely felt like a muggy kind of area but maybe we were too early.

Surprisingly it didn’t even smell like wee although we did spot some chunder left over from someone’s Saturday night so possibly it was just the strong breeze or my blocked nose that kept the odors under control.

Inside the aquarium we looked at some fish. Being an aquarium this is probably not an unexpected activity. I found a heap of fish with these protrusions from their foreheads that are apparently called “unicorn fish” but I gotta be honest I referred to them as something far less flattering. A lot. Like way more than was probably appropriate with all the children around. Looking at my photo gallery, it appears that about 50% of the photos I took on day 2 were of these fish in various forms. I am twelve years old apparently.

The aquarium has only somewhat recently reopened the section called “A Night On The Reef” which looks a little underwhelming when you first walk in (don’t get me wrong it’s still whelming, you just don’t get as whelmed as you feel you probably should be based on how much they advertise and promote this particular section) but then you walk along a totally tubular (literally) glass tunnel and POW you’re in this giant room with glass everywhere and its still the same tank as the original bit and suddenly you experience the perfect amount of whelming.

I stood in there for ages dreaming up my next fish tank project but it was pointed out that the tank we were walking around in is a larger volume than our entire house by several orders of magnitude so possibly that can wait until we’re millionaires or whatever.

In another area they are breeding endangered fish with tanks that are much closer in size to what I can fit in our house… but based on my fish keeping skills so far I think that letting me look after an endangered breed of fish is probably a surefire way to take something from the endangered list and put it on the critical list.

After moving on from the crocodiles and frogs, there were penguins. Seems that every aquarium around the world has to have penguins added in for some reason. Being Australia, even Melbourne in the winter time, they had cubes of ice with towels on them to keep the penguins cool I guess? Also what looked like an ice machine (sorry Bruce I didn’t get the make and model!) embedded in the roof just constantly dropping crushed ice which practically melted before it hit the floor.

After the aquarium (topped off perfectly with a classic pun on the sign on the way out like some sort of hilarious cherry on a fish cake) we headed to a Pho place we happened to drive past on the way in from the airport the day before. We walked there too, and I managed to get us there without even needing Google by following my impeccable sense of direction, and listening to Erin when she told me I was going the wrong way.

In classic Melbourne tradition the Pho was amazing, and I had a “boozy vietnamese coffee” which tasted amazing and had me dancing on the table with a lampshade on my head after the one small glass.

After Pho we ducked around the corner to the local BYD to confirm our commitment to glorious leader and allow our car to keep working for another year. Social credit score +1. Nice show room, but not open on a Sunday. Fun fact: walking a block away from Flinders Station saved a heap on the Uber rate to get back to the airport so thats the BYD brand coming in clutch and saving us money yet again!

Speaking of airports – Erin did her little gambling thing again (no seriously I think she has a problem) and once again we ended up in business class for the trip back to BNE. This meant boarding first, having giant chairs, getting fed delicious snacks, and generally being a smug dickhead to the people who were in economy. Nah not really. Don’t be fooled by the rocks that I got, I’m still Andrew from the block. I know where I came from.