South Melbourne Night Market

In the ²⁰¹²⁄₂₀₁₃ Night Market season I stopped by South Melbourne market to check out the wares. For about 2 minutes. It was about 1 star worthy and I left wondering why they bothered.
Fast forward to the ²⁰¹³⁄₂₀₁₄ season and it’s much bigger. Easily doubling the number of offerings, there are now stalls on either side of the walkway, creating more of an aisle feel and providing much more to see and better variety.
That said, it’s still quite small and it won’t take you long at all to see everything.
So if you’re in the area or plan on staying a while (say, grabbing a bite and a glass of wine at Claypots on the corner) it would be worth your while for a browse and a shop before settling in. If your purpose was to come out solely to shop at the market, you might be disappointed unless you spot something you really love.
That said, there’s always next year and if the shift between the last two years is anything to go by, this could be a 4 – 5 star experience in no time!

Since summer seems to be slowly creeping by and it’s still quite bright in the evenings, we’re always looking for places to go to after work. And today, we chose the South Melbourne Night Market, after reading about it in the newspaper. All excited at what we would expect, we chatted in a cab as we made the crawl through peak hour traffic to South Melbourne from South Yarra.
$ 16 later, we arrived and made a beeline for the night market. We started at a shop that sold handmade shoes and bags and 20 stalls later (approximately10 minutes stroll) we had finished the entire market. Naturally, we were both disappointed and wondered why the paper had made such a big fuss about it. Don’t get me wrong though, I applaud the talented craftsmen, independent designers and artists (stall holders) for coming down to sell their wares but shouldn’t there be more stalls to constitute a night market?
From the shops there, we did find some pretty interesting stuff including jewellery made from old records, cushions made from vintage tea towels and a wide range of head gear and fascinators, just in time for the races.