St. Kilda - Night 122

Mid-morningish, after another breakfast

from the market, I caught a tram down to Melbourne’s beach playground, the suburb of St. Kilda. The St. Kilda Festival has been running all week so I had hoped to indulge in some carnival food and breathe in the general merriment of a summer festival. Upon arrival, I was disappointed that most of the booths and such were just being set up. As it turns out, Sunday is the big day for the festival, Saturday is just a primer. This sort of nonsense would never pass in the States, since Saturday would be the big drinking and partying night with Sunday reserved for families. But then again, St. Kilda Festival is alcohol-free so that might have something to do with it. I had to settle for a meal from a café on the strip. The weather was partly cloudy, but warm, so I walked down the famous St. Kilda pier and hung out on beach for a

Beach Wakeboarding

bit. One of the attractions was up and running, the wakeboarding pools. Here three large inflatable pools are laid end to end, with jumps and rails in the middle. On the far side is a machine that is no more than a large winch that pulls the rope from one end to the other. Participants grab the rope and are pulled along the water, doing tricks and jumps along the way. It was exciting for about 20 minutes.

That evening I met Matt and Jana at their place on Farraday Street. The location is superb, just two blocks from the University of Melbourne and twenty steps from Lygon Street, the Italian District. The condition of the home, however, is not. It currently houses about ten people, mostly backpackers with working visas and one aboriginal couple. You can imagine the sort of maintenance the landlord gives to such a place….none. Matt’s old roommate, Scott from Tasmania, was hosting a birthday party up in North Melbourne so on the tram we got with intentions to crash. It was advertised as a cocktail party, but being backpackers our wardrobe of fine clothing is limited to say the least. No problem, as only about 50% of the revelers present had followed the invitation’s dress code guidelines. It was a good party and we returned home sometime after the 3 am hour.

Consiting of a large percentage of men,

Scott's Birthday Party

the party didn’t have the hot Aussie women I was hoping to see. There was a prodigious amount of food and alcohol, however, and the girl behind the bar kept feeding us Sambuca shots. Around 3am the party was winding down and, as I tend to do, I got a bit restless, so I decided to walk back home. This should have been a simple procedure…just follows the tram line back to Lygon Street. It wasn’t. Somewhere along the line I got lost. I remember thinking just find the bright lights of downtown and head towards them. I also them remember looking for the bright lights and not seeing them. Eventually I found some late party-goers who pointed me in the right direction, but laughed when I told them I was going to walk it. Two hours later I finally made it back to my hostel, at the nice early hour of 5:15am. I hadn’t exactly taken the shortest route possible. On flat ground I can generally cover about 3.5 miles an hour, figuring in my drunken pace I probably walked about 6 miles to get back home. I still wasn’t the least bit sober upon heading to bed.

What I Learned Today: Enough alcohol can even mess with my usually amazing sense of direction

written by

exumenius on February 9, 2008 from Melbourne, Australia

from the travel blog: Kiwis and Kangaroos

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