Friday, 24-10-2014. Day 65.

A Train Ride, A Marketplace, and Some Breweries

As I mentioned previously, we were glad to be back in Perth. We liked the city plenty before we'd spent a week WWOOFing on a farm, but we liked it a lot more now. Not waking up in the middle of the night to roosters was a treat.

The day called for a visit to Fremantle, a port city about a half-hour train ride to the southwest of Perth that is home to the Fremantle Markets, the historic Fremantle Prison, Fishing Boat Harbour, a number of microbreweries, and the gateway to Rottnest Island (which we didn't get a chance to visit).

Our time in Australia was almost over, and it was time to start preparing for the next stop in our journey: Bali. To enter Bali, you need $25 per person in U.S. bills. We only had about $12.74 between us. So, before we could go exploring, we had to do some business and made our way to the bank to get some funds.

On the way there, we walked back through Forrest Chase Square (by The Cactuses that aren't). Unlike the last time we'd walked through here, the fountain was on, and the kids had a good time running through the mazes of water created by the fountain.

To get to the bank, we took a sightseeing shortcut through London Court, a narrow laneway full of all sorts of shops. There were four or five of these mini-malls for pedestrians along the Hay Street mall and many others throughout the city. Exploring them was a lot of fun — you never knew what you were going to find.

After we were done in the bank, Jackie was hungry, so we stopped off for s snack at Pie Face, an Australian fast food place that's known for making pies (both sweet and savory) with faces on them. We'd been meaning to give it a try for some time, and this seemed like the perfect chance. (Turns out there are about three of these in the United States). They were pretty good.

From Pie Face, it was a short walk to the train station. The train to Fremantle left Perth Station every 15 minutes, and before too long at all we found ourselves at the Fremantle Railway Station just in time for lunch.

We walked down Market Street until we came to The Monk, which looked like a good place to get a bite to eat and a pint. It was.

Satiated, we continued on to the Fremantle Markets (only open on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday), which boasts something like 150 shops that sell everything from meat & produce to Australian bush hats to boomerangs to trinkets and more.

The kids picked up two mini-cupcakes with musk sticks in them (verdict: weird) and a selection of patches for their collections from a vendor that had a massive variety of patches on display.

After were were done with the market, our destination was Little Creatures. It was our anniversary, after all, so we wanted to do something a little special.

On our way there, we discovered the really cool Chart and Map Shop, which had a good selection of adventure books, books about fishing, nautical guides, travel guides, and (as you'd expect) a pile of old maps on a table, some flat, some rolled up, all fascinating. They were fabulous, and I could have spent the afternoon looking through them.

Right before we got to the brewery, we walked through Esplanade Park, where there's a Ferris wheel. Jackie really wanted to ride it, but it was $40 and no one else really wanted to join her. We bargained down to ice cream and a ride on the much more expensive London Eye (later in the trip) instead.

Little Creatures was busy. We tried to find a table on the back porch overlooking Fishing Boat Harbour, but it was packed so we settled for a table inside. The space is pretty cool, and the interior feels a lot like Golden Road Brewery back in Los Angeles.

Before we headed back to the train, as we promised Jackie, we stopped for some ice cream at a place called Cold Rock Ice Creamery. Something about the place seemed really familiar.

By the time we got back to Perth, it was starting to get dark, and that meant that Forrest Chase Square was rocking with the Friday night Twilight Hawkers Market. It looked like fun, but we'd done a lot of walking, so we caught the Yellow CAT back to the comforting confines of the Murray Hotel.

Notable Statistics

• Buses ridden: 2

• Trains ridden: 2

• Anniversaries celebrated: 1

• Ice cream eaten: 1

• Patches purchased: 7