The Museum & St. Kilda

Well, it's been another week and while we had some nice days earlier on, it's cloudy & rainy today, Saturday. Jason had a bug go through him this week, but he's feeling almost 100% better and ready to graduate from a liquid diet today and he's in at work until noon. It should be much nicer tomorrow, so we may head out for a drive and check off one of them from our list.

Yesterday I ventured into town, searching for some fabric to make a few little baby dresses from the pattern set I bought from a vintage fabric/crafty store last week. I stopped by a cute, hard-to-find French vintage haberdashery store I'd heard about (buttons & other notions for crafting), an expensive designer fabric store (didn't buy my fabric there:), a very interesting old fabric store that had been there 50 years and gone through floods without a single cleaning (I'd heard about this, and verified it as I noticed several spools of fabric that had almost become a part of the concrete floor they didn't care to pick up). Interesting. Then I came upon LinCraft--a JoAnn's type store where I found several awesome deals on cute fabric and finishings for my projects. I sure hope we're having a little girl!

Last Saturday, Jason worked a bit in the morning and then we headed to the Melbourne Museum to check out the Titanic exhibit. We walked through the museum, then watched the Titanic Imax production showing how their new equipment allowed them to go further into the ship wreckage than before. After that we walked through the exhibit where they had lots of information about a variety of famous passengers who were on the voyage, the difference between each class on the ship, and lots of recovered items which was pretty amazing as they first went down to the wreckage 73 years after it sank. The first class ticket was the equivalent of $112,000 today, while the third class ticket (and nicer accommodations than 3rd class on other ships) was equal to $1000--quite a difference! We were handed boarding tickets when we went into the exhibit with the name and background information of one of the passengers on the voyage. It helped you get a feel for what they were experiencing. At the end, we could look on the passenger list and were able to see if our passengers survived.

On Sunday, we ventured to St. Kilda. We rode the Yarra Tram service, which was very convenient. Sundays also includes a super saver fare, so it is also affordable.

St. Kilda is a part of Melbourne that was known for it's beaches and entertainment at the turn of the century. One of the main features is Luna Park, which reminded Jason a lot of Riverfront Park in Spokane. It had a complete wooden hand carved carousel and numerous rides you would expect to see at a county fairgrounds. This is the place with one of the world's oldest wooden roller coasters. The beaches back in the day used to be packed. This was where you would spend a summer afternoon on the weekend. Sunday was a bit chilly, but there were still lots of walkers, bikers, and skateboarders around. There were all sorts of hand made crafts available from about forty vendors at the St. Kilda Sunday market along the beach selling items such as jewelry, ceramics, paintings, leather, souvenir trinkets, stuffed animals, hats, and clothing.

We are going to head off to the library right now to check out some travel books for our jaunt to New Zealand in a few weeks.