Train trippin’

Of course, there’s only so many visits you can make to some local attractions in a year before they lose their excitement and, while there’s usually an event of some description happening every week or weekend here, they don’t always float our boat.

When we’re looking for something to do that we haven’t done before, we quite often venture out of the region.

Doing so obviously comes with a higher price tag these days, with fuel costs sitting where they are, which does make you think twice about how far away you are prepared to travel.

Due to unexpected injury over Christmas, I was forced to cancel our family holiday to Jervis Bay and the activities we’d booked to do while we were there.

Suffering severe mum guilt for taking away what we’d all been looking forward to for months, I tried to make up for it with an exciting day trip that I might be able to handle when my condition improved a little a week later.

The same injury rendered me useless to drive any longer than about half an hour at a time, so we boarded a train to Melbourne instead of taking the car.

While the trip is potentially a little longer (depending on road traffic on any given day) it actually worked out cheaper for the four of us to travel there and back than it would have cost for diesel and city parking rates, with each adult ticket entitling passengers two free kids’ tickets.

We selected our own seats online and booked four seats facing each other, which was actually really nice because instead of me concentrating on the road or shooshing the kids when I have no idea where I am after taking a wrong turn in the city, it meant we had a couple of hours of travel each way that day to talk to each other and play games (like I Spy), getting a valuable chunk of family time in.

I’d had to work hard to wake the kids to make the 9am train that day (they’re going to get a rude shock when school goes back), which meant they’d run out of time to eat breakfast before we boarded.

So as soon as we got off the train, we headed to a novel little Korean side-street canteen called Rainbow Toastie, where they make — you guessed it — rainbow toasties (among other things, such as loaded yabby tail toasties and cloud drinks).

With a slightly peculiar taste, as you’d expect from rainbow-coloured cheese on toast buttered with strawberry flavouring, it was one of those places that no matter how bad the food tasted, people would still flock there for the chance to get an Insta-worthy picture for their ’gram.

They really were impressive on the eyes (and not totally offensive to the tastebuds, just slightly odd).

After some exploring, shopping, checking out street art and epic Lego sculptures in shop window displays, we headed to Lygon St for our lunch booking at Karen’s Diner, which opened in Melbourne in March last year.

According to the website, “Karen’s is an interactive diner and an absurdly fun experience. At Karen’s you will be greeted and waited upon by rude waiters and forced to play a variety of games.”

We weren’t quite sure what we were going to get besides the delicious burgers and shakes I’d been told about, so we were a little nervous.

Turns out our instincts were right, as the onslaught of verbal abuse started as soon as the welcoming Karen opened the door to let us in and immediately referred to us as rats.

They didn’t let up much the entire experience and when my youngest (12) was too intimidated to order directly from a Karen, it became apparent my kids probably weren’t ready for the experience — two of them were too frozen to even take their backpacks off!

After having the serviettes we’d requested thrown at us, being dragged up to perform in a ‘catwalk and posing competition’ with other diners while Karens criticised us and being sworn at more times than a head chef at a restaurant Gordon Ramsay has come to fix, it was a literal relief to walk out the door.

Funny, yes, but even though you know it’s all just an act and the staff are in character, it’s still confronting to be spoken to that way.

And I suppose some people blur the lines between rudeness and aggression.

Having said that, I would love to return with a group of adult friends to experience it from a different angle.

The relief was short-lived, however, as when we made it to our next destination — the Old Melbourne Gaol — we were just in time for the Watch House Tour, which saw us ‘arrested’ and checked in as prisoners.

The sergeant was far more terrifying than any Karen at the diner as she read us our rights and ‘searched’ us (hands-free) up against the walls.

Luckily she slipped out of character to bid us farewell with a friendly smile as we journeyed into the gaol itself to soak up its rich and grisly history.

The atmosphere in places like that makes me quite uneasy and keen to leave before I’ve seen all there is to see.

However, the kids couldn’t get enough of exploring the cells and reading some of the hard-to-swallow tales from the not-so-distant past, seeing where Ned Kelly was hanged and inspecting the antique architecture of the prison structure.

Once the gaol closed, we had a couple of hours to kill before our train home, so we did more city exploring and shopping, including a fun little walk around every aisle in Kyoto Mart, where we picked up about 50 bucks worth of novel Japanese food to try.

Before we knew it we were in a park eating crab chips, drinking citrus-flavoured Pokemon water from a can and spitting out grass jelly and milk icy poles in utter disgust, while we laughed heartily about it all.

Being a weekday and a late train back to a regional area, our carriage was all but empty, which was a relief for me when my exhausted kids (who’d walked 10km that day) all had a moment where they turned into Karens themselves, insulting each other at volume.

Once order was restored, it was a nice little trip home to wind down and reflect on the day together, where the gentle rocking of the train in the quiet carriage put a couple of us to sleep.

Me being one of them, which is another benefit of trading the car for the train when you don’t have a co-driver on board.

So even though we caught the train this time out of necessity, I reckon there might just be more times in our future that we choo, choo, choose to travel that way.