Our weather in Melbourne has been wet, cold and miserable. As an indication, I’m wearing a scarf and beanie at the moment – unheard of at this time of the year. The constant grey dampness is affecting my mood. I don’t mind cold weather – it’s when it just constantly rains for days that affects my spirits.

Today after visiting the parents, I didn’t feel like going home so I boarded a train to the city and got off at Parliament to walk around in the rain with no particular goal in mind. Sometimes I just want to be in my own head space. I like wandering about and seeing where my feet take me.

I saw that on Lonsdale Street near the station, one of the alleyways had a huge French flag flying. It was an alley that had different market stalls of French products. Cheeses, crepes, raclettes, saucissons, tartes, you name it everything was there. Bonus!

However what I liked the most that everyone was speaking French. If I squinted, I could be mistaken that I was in France (ok maybe not). Australia has a completely different feel to a European city but hey, at least I have an imagination.

I wandered through the stalls and listened to the various conversations dropping in and out of ear shot. French people speak a lot about cheese….one young girl was complaining she had a headache while her mother was urging her to eat something. I understood it all in French.

They even had a mini French supermarket where I looked at the products that were mainly chocolate, pastry or jam of some sort.

I hadn’t eaten anything for some hours and the delicious smells of crepes was wafting over the market so I bought one with butter, sugar and cinnamon and it was just what I needed. Something warm and sweet to fill the hole.

The markets were put on by the Alliance Française. I had a conversation with one of the volunteers as I was interested in having one of their “free language assessments” done. However, I couldn’t hang around for another two hours which was the time it was scheduled so I reasoned with myself that I could do this another time.

What I also liked is there was a tiny bar called Little Lon. It was housed in one of the old houses that used to be prevalent in the 1880s in this part of town that was all slums. Now, it’s a tiny weeny one room sophisticated bar. On the outside there’s some bench space and even the outhouse (which is not as old as the original building) but you can see the original bluestone on the ground which is typical for Melbourne.

Not a bad little jaunt for a Saturday. It’s still early so I may now walk around and find a book store to hole up there in the hope of the rain stopping.

Or I may just head home.