After the wonderful wedding weekend (because alliteration) we’re back into Melbourne on Sunday morning on the train. We’re in another Mercure for this section of the trip, near the Queen Vic markets – not quite as convenient as the last one but still only 10-15 minutes walk from the train station. We drop our bags (it’s still far too early to check in) and head back out.

We’ve eaten very little so far this morning as we want to do brunch instead. Erin has again done some research and has a place in mind – Hardware Societé, a well-reviewed kinda hipstery place in the middle of the CBD. Of course it doesn’t take bookings and there are probably 25 people waiting outside when we get there at 11.15, but we were presently surprised when we were told the wait was only 25-30 minutes. Hunger was starting to bite but we were hoping it would be worth the wait!

A short wander and a bit of a read later we were called in and seated at a small bar counter; not the most comfortable seating ever but not too bad. Ordering coffee was easy but I had a lot of trouble with the menu; there was too much good stuff! I finally decided on the baked eggs with chorizo, Erin went for the poached eggs with homemade sausage. They were both really really good! My baked eggs had some almonds sprinkled through which was interesting, quite a nice and unusual texture. Erin’s homemade sausage was very tasty as well, and there was a lot of it. Another great food success!

We didn’t really have any fixed plans for the afternoon so we decided to walk to a park and just wander around a bit. It was quite a hot day, though, and we weren’t feeling the most energetic ever, so about half way there we decided maybe being inside was a better plan. We instead went to the ACMI (Australian Centre for the Moving Image) which holds exhibitions relevant to that area. We spent a couple of hours at their free permanent exhibition on the progression of the moving image from the late 1800s all the way up to the present day. It was quite interesting and had a lot of stuff I hadn’t known about before.

I found Skippy! Theme tune now in my head.

Mad Max’s car:

Nostalgia – lemmings!

A really cool thing that, using a combination of very fast rotation and strobe lighting, created the illusion of animation – obviously kinda hard to capture that in a picture, but still:

Quite an enjoyable couple of hours and by the time we were done it was mid-afternoon and we were ready to get checked in and have some relax time.

We had another free upgrade at this Mercure; free WiFi is fairly standard but the nespresso machine (with some pods) was different!

We de-grimed and just spent the rest of the afternoon in the hotel, the hot weather today was hitting us quite hard. Plus, the last few days had been pretty full-on and a bit of downtime seemed like a good idea.

Sunday night we went out to a suburb to spend some time with Erin’s brother and his fiancée. I’d not met him before and it was a while since Erin had seen him so there was plenty of catching up to be done. Ate some delicious pizza as well, although I didn’t really feel the need to take photos of that!

On the way home we decided we were definitely missing out on some dessert so we went back to the place we got the free icecream at a few days ago – clearly giving away some freebies does work to generate repeat business! I went for a chilli-chocolate flavour along with lemon and mango. It was really nice, and it was the first time that I’d tasted a proper spicy flavour of chocolate or icecream – any that I’d tried before had been quite mild. Enjoyed it, but not sure I’d choose it as a regular thing.

There are quite a lot of icecream cup shots on my blog, I’ve noticed.

Satisfied now, back to the hotel we went, done for the day. One more touristy day for us in Melbourne tomorrow, some rest required beforehand!