Monday.
With Ben back at work, and Em doing her thing with Leo and Angharad, we were off into Melbourne to do our own thing too. We had two things in mind: Melbourne’s Golden Mile Heritage trail, and the Pixar Exhibition at ACMI (Australian Centre of the Moving Image). But the first order of the day after getting in to Flinders Street station was to find some lunch! We looked in our guide book and made a short list of two places which were both just a couple of blocks away. One of them turned out not to exist any more, or at least to have transformed into another place. However, it had stairs to get in. No stairs always beats stairs when you’ve got a stroller, so we settled on the Hopetoun tea rooms.
After a good, if slightly pricy, couple of sandwiches and the by now de rigeur hot chocolate, the main event was cake: Lamington for me and an apple slice for the wife.
Now, a short aside about Aussie food. In general, a lot like UK food, it tends towards the homey. Australians are big on pie – well who isn’t? But I think they’re being a little boastful in thinking it’s strictly an Australian thing. However, curry pie is a work of genius, I’ll admit. Vegemite I’ve already covered: they also have Marmite, but owing to trademark issues they have to call it “My Mate”. Sausages, or snaggers, on the barbecue are another big thing, and all Australian parks have public barbecues to go and have a cook out. Just take along food and something to give the barbie a bit of a clean with, and you’ll soon be enjoying tasty meat-based snackage. This also meets with my approval.
Lamington is another great thing. Basically a Victoria sponge covered with chocolate and rolled in coconut. They range from the posh tea-room variety (as pictured above) to the one-rung-below-Mr-Kipling very-artificially-enhanced-I’m-sure variety, and for me both have their place. I seldom say no to a lump of cake waved in my direction. The last Australian foodstuff that must be mentioned is the Tim Tam. It’s been compared to a penguin (I’m talking about the chocolate bar), but I think it’s better. There is something about it. One thing I haven’t tried, but am intrigued by, is the hot chocolate Tim Tam mouth explosion, whereby one bites off opposite corners of a Tim Tam before sucking it full of hot chocolate and popping it into ones mouth whole. I think I have to try this.
Anyway, back to the plot. After lunch, we thought “Pixar or Golden Mile first?” and of course, naturally I chose Pixar. So we went over to ACMI and paid our $15 each plus $40 for the souvenir guide (no pictures allowed inside, you see). I thought $40 was a bit steep, but didn’t mind so much paying it for a thick book full of artwork, which after all, I can also write off on my taxes. However, the other merchandising was definitely milking it – $30 for a mug?!
Before actually heading down to the exhibit, we looked around the rest of ACMI. It’s not really a museum like MOMI in London is, but more an exhibition space. There were some interesting short films on show and a couple of rooms dedicated to the Independent Games Festival winners. After mini-Elbeno was awake, fed and changed, we went down to see Pixar. Mrs Elbeno did a sterling job corralling the young chap while I lost myself in the artwork and movies on show. They were showing all the older Pixar short films – Luxo Jr, Red’s Dream, Tin Toy, etc – as well as a whole load of concept art, character and world development work from the later films, and also interviews with various Pixar employees.
When we’d had enough to be going on with, we headed up to the cafe for a bite to eat, and mini-Elbeno got a chance to meet some friends:
In all we ended up spending a few hours at ACMI, foregoing the Golden Mile for today. For once the kids all went to bed at a reasonable time in the evening and we were able to complete a couple of games of Buzz!. I won one, but Em showed it was just a fluke by thrashing us all second time around.