Melbourne: Day 3

Today was Good Friday, which turned out to be a pretty big holiday around here, meaning most of the shops were closed. So, we hopped on the tram and made our way down to St. Kilda. It is a beach side town filled with cake shops, and lucky for us, cake shops are open on holidays. Once we arrived we strolled down the beach path toward Luna Park, an old-fashioned amusement park built in 1912. It is known for it's famous entry, walking into the mouth of a clown. One of the wooden roller-coasters was running past us as we walked by and you could see it from above the surrounding fence. The wild thing was, there was a park employee standing between the two cars of the roller-coaster controlling (what I imagine was) the breaking of the cars. How crazy is that?!?

After all that excitement we decided it was time for cake. So we walked down to the main strip and located what we felt were the top 3 cake shops. After numerous trips past the windows of these shops, we settled on one. Matt ordered a vanilla slice (a local concoction that is quite popular) and I had a cannoli (I am a sucker for a cannoli). Since it was sunny and warm and we were now on a sugar rush, we decided to head for a walk further down the street to another shopping district. We discovered this district to be a bit more ethnic, so not much was open. Coming down from the sugar rush, we opted to take the tram back to St. Kilda's main drag.

Our sights were now set on lunch, so we set out to investigate some of the places that had been recommended to us. We settled on the Stokehouse, primarily for its beach front location. Since it was approaching mid-afternoon we didn't have to wait long for a table and were sat not far from the windows. We had a leisurely lunch that was perfectly portioned and felt content when leaving. From here we wandered back toward Melbourne along the beach until we decided to hop back on the tram the rest of the way.

This evening we decided to catch another comedy show and saw Tom Green perform. We settled on Chinese food for dinner after the show. Perhaps it is how close to Asia we are here, but definitely some of the best Chinese food we've had! Afterward, we wandered the streets until we found a good place to sit and have a drink. The bar was in the new Council House 2 building, Melbourne's first attempt at building an energy efficient, green environment for its public employees.