After a long, frustrating and quite tiring day on Monday, less than 5 hours sleep that night, and early start on Tuesday, the drive to Healesville and back and 36 holes of golf, I was delighted this morning to be able to have a lie in and take my time getting going.  I wasn’t due to play golf today until 5pm.

After getting up I had a cup of coffee and a long chat with Karen, Peter’s wife, in the AirBnB and decided that I’d spend the first part of the day having a stroll around the Melbourne suburb of St Kilda and have lunch there, too.  After a bit of research I decided to head for Claypots, a seafood restaurant in St Kilda.  Claypots (above) offers a variety of seafood but is known for dishes cooked in, you guessed it, claypots.  I chose the Singapore, which included rice, a Lakhsa style sauce and a mountain of fish, prawns and mussels.  First, though, I was given some wonderful, freshly baked bread and a delicious tatziki style dip to accompany a very pleasant glass of Pinot Gris from the Mornington Peninsula.

And then the claypot: Delicious and, at $43 for the food and two glasses of good wine (a glass of very good Chardonnay from  the Mornington Peninsula went really well with the claypot) possibly the best value meal I have had in Australia.

After lunch I strolled round St Kilda.  It’s a seaside suburb (though the beach was the least impressive beach I have seen over here):

The town, however, looked great fun.  Acland Street (just round the corner from the restaurant) was colourful and had several of the fancy cake shops and bakeries for which St Kilda is, apparently, well know:

and I saw my first Christmas tree of the year:

My stroll took me past the funfair and rollercoaster:

directly opposite this rather odd combination:

Community Gardens and Art Studios

I liked St Kilda (I returned in the evening for dinner) and look forward to seeing more of it tomorrow when a few of the blokes I’ve played with in Melbourne and I are having dinner there.

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