Andrew's Last Day in Melbourne

Had another slow start to the day, gathered things together, met Andrew and we headed out to have a look around Victoria Markets. It was a cloudy morning and there was a bit of a nip in the air, but it looked like it might clear up.

The markets themselves are no different to the markets you get in big market towns. It really reminded me of the big undercover Leicester market (ok, so you were kind of right JJ about Melbourne being like Leicester, but I like Leicester so it’s all good!). The inside bit was all meat, fish, cheese, bakery and confectionery, but the undercover outdoor bit was slightly more random, apart from the massive fruit and vegetable section.

The cloud started to burn off and we headed to Maccas for a spot of wifi, before continuing our wander into town. We took the City Circle tram for a bit so Andrew could see some of the bits of the city that he hadn’t already seen, but he kept falling asleep! Seeing as the tram was not conducive to staying awake, we decided to hop off and walk for a bit.

Our wandering ended up in the area near the town hall, where we were promptly pounced upon by people who wanted to harass us about going to see their show, as part of the Comedy Festival. We had various leaflets shoved at us, but we got accosted by two separate comedians, then after a conflab about what to do that evening we decided we’d give the comedy thing a try. As we hadn’t previously thought about it, so hadn’t researched, we couldn’t decide what to see, but it seemed like a good idea to go to one of the people we’d spoken to. This meant we flipped a coin between the person who had accosted me, and the guy who had done the same to Andrew. My comedian won, so after a bit more wandering, we headed to where he was going to be – the Portland Hotel – and had a drink in the bar.

The venue was unusual; they’d created a mini (very mini) triangular shaped room by using partition walling to section off the corner of one of the function rooms – they had done a couple of these in the same big room. It meant the stage was in the corner and the seats (maybe 40 max?) were all tightly packed in, to build up the rest of the triangle. So it was very cosy, to say the very least! Mark Trenwith was, to be honest, largely underwhelming. Some good comedy ideas but it was all a bit disjointed and a little awkward, especially seeing as we were practically sat on the stage with him. Either way, it was something to do, so we figured it wasn’t the end of the world and the tickets had been cheap.

On our way out, I spotted a poster that looked really cool, it was for another show that was on as part of the festival. We looked it up and it was starting five minutes from then. We had a decision-making moment, then plumped for legging it to the venue and seeing if we could still get in. It was a bit of a race against time, but we eventually arrived at the Swiss Club and got our tickets. We were amongst a bunch of latecomers and we were let in at an appropriate moment, so I think we only missed about 5 mins of the show. This did not matter. The show was ace! Josh Earl vs The Woman’s Weekly Birthday Cake Book. Classic! We laughed really hard and it made us forget about the fact that the first show was a bit pants.

When we left the show, we found a Mexican restaurant that looked pretty cool and had a delicious dinner, before staggering back in the direction of the hostel, full to the brim – but stopped off at Maccas first for a bit of wifi! Once back at the hostel, I bade Andrew a safe journey to NZ and went to bed, whilst he stayed up to make his way to the airport.