Mission Impossible? Melbourne in a day [Part 1]

Yep, throwing monetary caution to the wind I flew down to Melbourne - just for the day! Oh yeah! The Vintage Cosmonaut Caught the 6:45am flight and was stomping Melbourne city pavements before 9am. I'd mapped out an ambitious itinerary of exhibitions and vintage shops to visit the night before and God alone knew how much I could cover before shops shut and I was safely back at the airport for my 8pm flight.

The only tricky bit to the whole operation was that the flight pretty much blew my new tight budget so I was on a strict "looky-looky no buyie-buyie" policy. Insane, I know, but I do like to torture myself. I eased the pain somewhat by reasoning with myself that being able to look without buying was good practice for losing weight - the discipline of look without eating being along the same lines. I sweetened the deal even further by telling myself that if I manage to lose the 5-10kg this year I need/want to then I'll reward myself by coming back to this fair city and buying all the dresses that were in the 'too small' category this trip. Cool huh?

It had been over five years since I'd been to Melbourne (a crime in itself) and the last time was with Mr T of Mission Control. He's not much of an gallery lover nor shopper (in his mind "finds" = "junk"), so I never really scratched the surface of Melbourne's vintage scene nor it's galleries at the time. So this trip was set to rectify all that.

Mission (Impossible) Itinerary

1. NGV exhibitions:

• Unnerved: the New Zealand project
• Australian Made: 100 years of fashion
• Lace in Fashion
• Luminous Cities: photographs of the built environment
• Stormy Weather: contemporary landscape photography)

 2. Lunchbreak: Crossways (I'm vegetarian... hari krishna hari rama...)

3. CBD vintage shops (in no particular order):

• Out of the Closet
• Scruffs
• Anonymous Posh
• Retrostar Vintage Clothing
• Speed Boy Girl
• Episode
• Currency

4. Melbourne Museum

•  Melbourne store
• John Rodriquez - textile designer

5. Fitzroy - Carlton

• Meet Me at Mikes
• Max Watts
• Industria
• Thread Den
• Cellardoor
• Love Vintage

6. North Melbourne

• Arthur's Circus
• Muff (@ Queen Victoria Market)
• Salvos Store
• Memoirs

I toyed with the idea of heading to Albert Park to visit Empire Vintage but kind of knew instinctively that unless the NGV was shut for an emergency, Empire would have to wait for another (longer) day. I also reluctantly acknowledged that I probably wouldn't make it to North Melbourne either but left it on the list just the same. But unfortunately by the time I'd walked about half the above I'd run out of steam and time. Kind of stranded myself like a beached pedestrian whale halfway up Brunswick St and had to crawl my way onto a passing tram. C'est la vie!