Quirky Brunswick

It was the long weekend of Queen's Birthday on 8 June, we took another day off so we could have a super long weekend to do what we love most. Today we wandered into Brunswick, one of the many varied suburbs near Melbourne. The main road is Sydney Road which stretches for miles.

So we took a slow stroll in this beautiful Melbourne weather - wet, cold, windy, freezing, occasionally the sun comes up to say a shy hi and goes back into hiding really quite quickly. The temperature gauge in our car showed 9C but when it is windy, the windchill makes it feel like 2C less.

Sydney Road is full of surprises, the world cultures seemed all lined up in one street. Greek bakeries, Italian restaurants & supermarkets, Turkish homewares, lebanese cafes & clothing stores, Vietnamese/South East Asian restaurants, Vietnamese fabric stores, Japanese restaurants are home on this street. In between, there are a couple of bars with live music, the Brunswick Music Festival is held every March. This is a good place for unusual fashion stores unlike your typical Bridge Road or Chapel Street.

Love the clothes in Friends of Couture (www.friendsofcouture.com.au), the brand carries clothes that has an alternative style but wearable and reasonably priced. Across the road, probably by the same owner, is Episode which sells second hand clothing, mainly vintage. I found some milk maid type of clothes, really odd. But what's interesting is the clothes from Friends of Couture were also found here at discount prices because they are either losing a button or running thread that makes the value goes down by half.

There is one other store which I aspire to buy all my clothes from is Digging for Apples (www.diggingforapples.com) up the road towards Moreland precinct. High fashion with an edge, the buyer of this store has done all the selections for me (ahem!). Designer pieces from Nudie Jeans, Sass & Bide, Romance was Born, Claude Maus, Zambesi and Karen Walker were on for 20-40%. But the tags were between $230 - $1080. All I could do is take their card and walked out. Maybe one day I will save enough.

Food was great at Kaleidoscope where we had lunch, their influence was Mediterranean, I had lentil soup and Alex had risotto. We had to go to Choukette, a french pattiserie because that's how I discovered Brunswick. But the cakes were dissapointing, not as tasty as I thought it would be. We rested our tired feet at Bar Etiquette - weird bar with just 4 customers including us the whole time we were there. So we had a nice chat with Mike, the bartender and gather some advice on where to have our dinner. The bar was set in a two storey house, the rooms upstairs all had a different theme but all dark and filled with lounge chairs. Music was good but the art on the wall by Leigh Watson is better.