Luna Park
After a morning of croissants and street art, we headed down to St Kilda, Melbourne’s seaside suburb. You can’t miss Luna Park: the entrance is a giant laughing face, and you walk in through its mouth. It’s been grinning at people since 1912, and up close it’s slightly terrifying. We didn’t actually go in. No rides, no roller coaster, not even a peek past the teeth. We just stood outside, took photos with the face like everyone else, and walked off to look at cake instead. Minmin got her photo with it, and that was Luna Park done.
Right next door is the Palais Theatre, a big yellow art deco concert hall from the 1920s. Between the two of them, this corner looks like a postcard from a hundred years ago.
Acland Street
Around the corner is Acland Street, famous for its old cake shops, some of them baking since the 1930s. The windows are piled high with cakes, tarts, cheesecakes and slices. Very hard to walk past. And our first purchase on Melbourne’s most famous cake street? Orange juice from Coles. We were thirsty, and the cakes could wait. The street ends at a tram stop under big orange umbrella shelters, with the trams rolling right through the middle.
The foreshore
Then a walk along the foreshore: palm trees, the Ferris wheel behind us, and Port Phillip Bay under a big cloudy sky. It was windy and a bit cold, very autumn, but still nice to just walk by the sea for a while.
Yo-Chi
From the foreshore we took a tram inland to Balaclava, for Yo-Chi, a self-serve frozen yoghurt place. You pull your own yoghurt from the machines, then go wild at the toppings bar: fruit, sauces, cookie bits, granola, all of it. Pricing is by weight, so this is where self-control is tested. We failed.
Balaclava station is just down the road, so with the froyo gone we hopped on a train for sunset at the Brighton bathing boxes.
Postcard from St Kilda
Open since 1912, and you walk in through the mouth of a giant laughing face. Free to walk in; you pay for the rides.