marvelous Melbourne

I'm staying at the Nunnery in Fitzroy, a hostel I stayed at the last time I was in Australia in 2002(!). Then as now, Fitzroy was ridiculously hip.

It's posher than I remember, but the world has grown a little smaller and more sophisticated thanks to 20-somethings with Instagram.

If I had a month, I wouldn't have time to sample all the food recommendations from upscale vegan to Sri Lankan to a romantic spot that specializes in duck....

In that regard, Fitzroy reminds me a bit of Plateau, the neighborhood I call my own in Montreal.

Awake at 5 am (it's 5 hours earlier here, tomorrow), I helped myself to toast with vegemite and walked over to Queen Victoria Market.

It's very late spring, which means ripe tomatoes and luscious apricots and local peaches and cherries.  I'll go grocery shopping for real when I have a car in a few days, so today I limited myself to cherries.

 

Of course I had to stop by the statue to the 8-hour day and organized labor. (The top says 888.) Australian unions first supported an 8-hour day in 1856. 

Sydney is one of San Francisco's sister cities, but Melbourne could be its twin. Not geographically (that would be Wellington, NZ) but historically. 

Modern-era Melbourne found itself a banking capital after a gold rush in 1850. There's a lot of gorgeous decorative architecture left over from the era. It's a well-situated port with mild but not terribly warm weather. 

Over the years, it's become known for its characterful neighborhoods and wide variety of restaurants, with immigrants from all over Asia and the world. 

Fitzroy and the area around the Nunnery have gone through prosperous times as well as hard times. The nuns used to hand out sandwiches to the hungry. Now they just have free barbecues for tourists, and tomorrow morning, pancakes.

You can see why I'd feel at home here. 

There's a park with clay tennis courts across the street, and old and new streetcars they call trams. Also the excellent Melbourne Museum, which was newly opened last time I was here. 

Seems like a perfect way to fight off jetlag and visit an old friend.

Trivia: I wrote the last paper of my college career on Patrick White, the first Australian writer to win the Nobel Prize in Literature.

It's a fine collection of Australiana as well as natural history specimens. And some glorious aboriginal art. These enormous sails are from what today is Papua New Guinea.

 Aboriginal tribes make these hand-painted human-like creatures out of wood.

 Baskets can be woven from so many different materials.

In this room, the wooden keys undulated, with a creation myth projected upon them. The story of the land and the people who lived here, before.

Since I was in Melbourne last, they've built what seems like hundreds of skyscrapers. Really tall ones. I took the free tram out to the docklands where they've built a whole new city. It reminds me of the new part of Toronto, the smart city with some controversial infrastructure by Sidewalk Labs. Or Vancouver, where they've already responded to growth with modern solutions.

There's no rhyme or reason to the shapes and colors of the structures. Some of them are delightful. I'd guess they've added a million people to metro Melbourne since 2002.

But if you stroll through the neighborhoods, you can still find some fossils.

I ran across this elegant sculpture, dedicated to women's suffrage.

Twins who've grown apart over the years

This modern apartment building with chartreuse balconies even matches the Brunswick streetcar color scheme.

I'm off to explore. We're expecting a heatwave Monday (90s!). For now, I'm loving the long almost-summer nights, hoping tonight I can stay up late enough for the sunset.

tea part two

On the east side of the city center, nature and development compete for primacy. Let's step back in time 100+ years.

The Willow tea rooms were a joint project of Charles Rennie Mackintosh and Catherine Cranston.

Miss Cranston was a successful entrepreneur who commissioned Mackintosh to design a series of tea rooms inside and out.

Happily three of them are still operating in Glasgow after a good deal of restoration.

I visited two of them and the tea room museum, which tells the story of the tea trade and Miss Cranston's social enterprise. After Queen Victoria's death and the rise of the temperance movement, tea rooms were an alternative to bars.

I could spend more time on the design of the museum, which allows you to mix a virtual tea blend or these tea cup speakers...

Or the interactive quiz I took based on video projections of the dishes served in the tea room at the time...

But let's skip to Miss Cranston's activism. She hired orphans and young woman with no means and trained them.

She was an exacting client, and Mackintosh delivered on her demands. The museum is in the last of the tea rooms, which opened around 1904 and you can see the stylistic similarity to Frank Lloyd Wright. A lot of attention was paid to the chairs, and their velvet seats stuffed with horsehair. Sadly the seats in the tea room were something more modern, stylish but uncomfortable.

The original Art Nouveau doors

 A video showed the process of painting this gesso portrait

Finally, downstairs for tea.

Of course I got the afternoon tea, for 19 pounds 04 pence. I don't know why I keep doing this. 

I actually prefer to pick out my own sweets. But the tea and scones were excellent. Passionfruit mousse seemed a bit modern.

I don't know what this fork is for. Do you?

A quick trip upstairs to admire the top level and the glass details. They have dumb waiters, which makes the servers' job a little easier. And makes the trays of pretty food magically appear.

Every detail lovingly restored

As I continued on my way, I happened upon another Willow tea room, on the 3rd floor of the now discount Watt Brothers department store. Think Sears in near bankruptcy. It didn't seem promising, but I persevered.

The window display for Willow at Watt Brothers is much more modest. The prices are too. Who doesn't love merengues?

I wasn't hungry after the last stop. But the woman at the front was so welcoming, I decided to have a pot of the house blend. Prices were half as much as the other tea room.

The clientele wasn't all German tourists straight off a tour bus. It was a tea room in a department store doing what a tea room was meant to do: fill your stomach at a fair price and provide a place to catch up with your friends.

The tea was excellent. I finally got a bowl of Cullen Skink, which is basically leek and potato soup with smoked fish in it, served here with oatcakes. And a lot of cream. Still stuffed, I ordered a couple of simple pastries to pack for the plane.

Glasgow really does have good bones. Miss Cranston fell in love in her 40s and married. She lived a long life, and when she died, left the majority of her wealth to help the down and out of Glasgow. A truly pioneering woman.

Glad to find this fountain/environmental scold, although I wish I'd seen more of them around the country. It was a cold rainy day (versus steamy London).

Police have changed with the times too. At the city center, locals and UK visitors shopped, vaped, and took sillier pictures than on the fancy part of town with the gastropubs. It wasn't as picture perfect, but it did feel more real than lovely Kelvingrove Park and Great Western.

Gratuitous guys in kilts calendar for Lisa. No, I did not buy one despite the modest price. Use your imagination.

Time to pick up my things, return my rental car, and head south. Assuming I can figure out the subway loop.

 Back in the trendy part of town…

Rock me, Amadeus.

And so I have said goodbye to Glasgow and my adorable guesthouse by the River Kelvin. Off to London for a visit with my old friend Quee Lim and the postal museum! Much deliciousness will ensue.