Kevin Standlee: Fandom Is My Way of Life

I can access the executive lounge at the Hilton, which has free wi-fi. I'm not up to spending large sums for the connection in the room. I may spring for connectivity in the convention centre a couple of times; I'm not sure. And of course it depends on whether the service even lets me do so, since the mobile phone I got yesterday won't let me use a non-Australian card to recharge it. I need to go to a shop sometime today to put some minutes on it, or otherwise I can only receive calls, not make them. If you don't have an Australian credit card, you can recharge the minutes in person at certain shops, but not online using a credit card.

I did go to dinner on the Colonial Tramcar Restaurant last night, the start/end of which is a block from the Convention Centre. I had a nice steak and a blood-sugar-raising chocolate mousse that I enjoyed a great deal along with a tour of parts of Melbourne from on board the tram that has been converted to a restaurant. Now I understand one of the reasons the meal is relatively expensive: there's a bunch of alcohol included in the price: sparkling wine, dinner wine, after-dinner drinks. Not having any appreciation for the taste of alcoholic beverages, this was lost on me. But I still enjoyed myself a lot.

Knowing how streetcars work, I was not at all surprised when we reversed direction a bunch of times. The trip is not circular, but out-and-back, and requires the streetcar to change ends several times. This was disconcerting to the group sitting next to me, who kept complaining about the car "going backwards." I was sitting at one end of the car, which is all wood and mirrors and curtains and very pretty, but a couple of times one of the tram operators opened the end door (covered in mirrors), and you could see the regular tram control stand at my end of the car.

It was a great trip on the streetcar restaurant, and if I'm here in Melbourne again sometime, I might well do it again. Maybe next time I'll even spring for the late dinner, rather than the early (shorter, less expensive) early dinner. But in this case, I was happy to be on the early seating because it meant I could get to bed relatively early -- but still 4 AM by Pacific Time. I slept well and woke up on my own at 7:30, so, fingers crossed, I'll not have too much trouble adjusting to the time down here. I don't have time for jet-lag.

We walked over to Mother's and had some of the best red beans and rice I've ever had. I could easily have eaten the large, but I was trying to think of an expected large dinner tonight and had the medium. Then we walked back to Canal Street and caught the first outbound streetcar, which turned out to be heading out the City Park line, which diverges from Canal Street. We rode out to the end and waited the fifteen minutes or so before it turned back. Cheryl took some pictures, which I'll have eventually -- possibly a new icon, if one of them turns out. We got off at a smoothie shop we'd spotted on the outbound trip and bought smoothies. You can't have food or drink on the streetcar, so we decided to walk on the parallel sidewalk back to the Canal Street line, where we turned right and followed the Cemetery line. As it happens, I didn't finish my smoothie until we were nearly at the end of the line, so we walked the rest of the way to the end of Canal Street. Of course the next inbound car left just as we got there, but that did give us fifteen minutes to look around the various cemeteries clustered around the streetcar terminal.

A little while later, another car arrived, which we boarded and rode clear down to the other terminal near the Casino (right next to the Doubletree hotel where SMOFCon was held years ago). I also wanted to ride the nearby Riverfront line to complete the "collection," so we walked to the nearest station. There were people who had been waiting a while. We waited another ten minutes or so before deciding something was wrong and gave up. Walking back to the Canal Street terminal, we boarded an outbound car; the motorman, when I asked, said that there had been a power failure on the Riverfront line and cars weren't running. It would have been nice if something had been done to get that information to the riders!

Although it was only about six blocks up to Bourbon/Carondolet where our hotel is, since the car was about to leave and we had day passes anyway, we rode back there. With over 9600 steps on the counter -- on hard pavement, not soft dirt trails -- our legs were starting to protest a little.

Now I need to go get cleaned up, for we have reservations for 9:15 at Arnaud's.