After an early morning flight and a terrible drive to the hotel which almost resulted in a few head-on collisions with the trams in Melbourne (that's what happens when your other half thinks he's an F1 driver), we arrived safe and sound at our hotel.
You can only imagine how relieved I was, not to mention hungry too after all the hair-raising action (and embarrassment cos so many pedestrians witnessed what happened). So, we made Queen Victoria Market our first stop. JW wanted me to try the raspberry jam filled doughnuts, which he loves.
Look at the queue! I don't particularly like doughnuts, but I thought since the queue is so long, the doughnuts should be worth the wait.
People buy doughnuts by the bags here. Each bag comes with 6 doughnuts. Goodness...the sugar coated exterior is enough to induce diabetes. Wait till you sink your teeth into the sugary sweet raspberry jam. Calling it a sugar overdose is definitely an understatement.
JW has a sweet tooth so he single-handedly ate up 5 of these doughnuts. I only took 1 because no matter how good it is (I personally think it is overrated), I still prefer savoury food.
At that point, my stomach was growling so bad I wanted to faint from hunger. But lo and behold, my eyes lit up the moment I saw this van!
I love mussels! Especially when they're freshly cooked in a mobile van with two mussel shells for a roof. You can choose to have your mussels baked in cheese or cooked in white wine sauce.
I chose the white wine sauce. ;)
Erm, yes your eyes aren't playing tricks on you. They serve the mussels to you in a plastic bowl within a plastic bag. There're no seats around too, so I literally sat on the pavement by the road to eat this. As you can tell, I was to hungry to care about image by then!
Byebye you juicy, succulent mussel.
One by one, I devoured them, savouring the goodness of every single one with utmost delight.
I convinced JW to try one too. Just to provide some background info, JW abhors seafood, especially oysters, clams and mussels because the texture turns him off.
Now, for the moment of revelation.
The minute he bit into the mussel, his face puckered up and contorted into a reaction of disgust. He looked so tormented I figured I should stop wasting my time and more importantly, my mussels on him.
Yeah, so I happily gobbled up the rest of the mussels (there must have been at least 20-30 of them) at lightning speed. If I were more shabbily dressed, you would have thought I was a beggar having my first meal of the week. I might have gotten myself a few coins from compassionate passersby too.
Anyhow, it was a satisfying meal and it certainly gave me the energy to continue walking around. We were very tickled by this picture because we're so used to seeing Asians tending to fruit stalls in the markets, it's actually rather odd to see people of other ethnicities assume the role in a similar setting.
Ok, I know, we're so duh. Please don't roll your eyes at us.
We were very impressed by the variety of fruits, vegetables and condiments though. You can even find fresh organic produce here! In case you were wondering, we left with some strawberries (unbeatable price of $2 a box!) and grapes.
The rest of the market resembles Paddy's market in Sydney and the "pasar malams" in Singapore, except that everything is grossly overpriced. In my opinion, the other parts of the market are nothing but tourist traps.
More on Melbourne in a bit! It's mid-week, which means Friday and the weekend are just around the corner! ;)
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