Shoes!

I woke up to a scratching and whining from behind my door. It was the first night I ha closed it all the way, instead of leaving it slightly ajar. I did some stretches, wrote down a few things, read the news and then had shower. After this I went downstairs to greetings of “good afternoon” despite it being five to ten.

John was there, and he had two presents for me, the first was a collective thank you from everyone who had received the invitations, especially from Maria’s father, who as considerably brightened by it. He has been quite ill of late, so it was quite a big thing really. The second was a Cowboy Surfer T-shirt, which are designed and produced by John’s son. Find his products on eBay under the name Cowboysurfertshirts.

After a breakfast of crumpets and honey (oh so very English, not as breakfast though) Teo came back and we took off for the Queen Victoria Market. It had been raining all morning, but the sun just came out for us again, making it yet another perfect top down drive across the city. I’ll say it now, if you are ever in Melbourne, you have to drive here in a convertible, the views are great. Also, visit Queen Vic market, do.

The market is large, yet quite easy to navigate and rather well organized. It felt rather less crowded than I imagined, and apparently it was abnormally quiet indeed for a Friday. We wondered around, looking at the Australiana, tourist stuff and other products on sale. Teo and I had a few good laughs about the Pakistanis selling “Aboriginal” art, especially the one great connoisseur who went into unending detail about the spiritual significance of the floral design on the side of a clearly mass produced  boomerang, to an American tourist who was soaking it all up, like a sponge.

I looked at some suitcases, since I am quite interested in trading my somewhat battered Trunk&Co. for a larger, more suiting model. Ideally I would like something that could house my diving gear, as well as clothes and other necessities. The market was full of Australian made cases, but I decided to see if I can find one of reasonable price, that has an international guarantee. I also looked briefly at hats.

What I bought thought, was  some chemical hot-packs, the type that produce heat over and over again through and exothermic reaction. I figured it would be a great way of keeping my neck issues to a minimum, but we shall see if it really solves anything. I also got two pairs of leather shoes, well a pair of “grazier” boots and dress shoes.

Both pairs are also leather soled, so to begin with, rather slippery on surfaces like parquet, carpets and smooth tiles. Considering that shoes tend to be worn here all day, inside and out, it is a slight hazard, but worth it. Leather soles are more me. Speaking of what is me, the boots are actually a red/brown color, very nice, but not something I would have pictured myself wearing before I tried them on. The other shoes are black, of course.

The shoes weren’t cheap, which is no surprise considering their quality, but still, I do not know if I could have gotten similar shoes in Finland for twice the price. Possibly, but who knows. The suitcases, as well as hats, belts and almost everything else that had visible price tags was considerably cheaper than in Finland. Next trip I am flying without luggage, buying a big suitcase and filling it all here.

We had lunch at the market also, Chinese soup. Teo had Tom Yum, I had prawn and pork dumpling soup. Very kosher. Afterwards we headed back over to the car, where someone had put a flyer under the wiper. The flyer told us that the car ha sustained collision damage, and the repair work was very obvious. It also warned us that there might be dangerous structural damage that has only been covered over.

Considering it is a new car, I can only come to the conclusion that whoever left the flyer has never seen a convertible before…