the whole time, i was thinking about my mom. and wishing she was there with me to witness awesome antiques in all their polished glory.

tyabb packing house came as a pleasant surprise. on one of jeff’s rare saturday day off, we drove to this camera shop in frankston to have his rolls of film printed. of course, if you know jeff, there’s NO WAY he cannot NOT linger around far longer than his parking time limit when he’s in a camera shop. he just goes cray-cray — either drooling over cameras and lenses, or chatting up the staff who may be just as crazy about cameras as he is.

so, yeah, he was looking around for vintage lenses. talking to some guy on the counter with ridiculously flawless skin i had to restrain myself from interrupting their conversation and asking him about his skin care regimen. you know how some people have skin that glows? his was like that. i have to admit he wasn’t bad looking. (quite the contrary, actually.) if i had the guts, i would’ve definitely asked him to go out with my sister. i reckon he’s definitely her type — soft-spoken guys with a nice hair tied up in a ponytail whose skin glows softer than a japanese lantern. (a what?!)

anyhow, my ex-future brother-in-law, with his calm, quiet voice advised us to go to tyabb packing house. said there’s a shop there that sells vintage lenses. and so we did.

twenty minutes later, we found ourselves in a place my mom would consider a paradise.

a lover of antiques, my mom would simply flip at the sight and smell of vintage everything. i know i did, being my mother’s daughter. i had to call her the next day just to tell her about jeff and mine’s discovery and she sounded pretty ecstatic at the thought of us taking her there on her next visit here. i told her the next time jeff and i go, i’m buying her those cute thimbles (because they were only $12 each) but she was like, “nah, find me some nice teapot sets.” (jeff and i did go back there 2 days later and those teapot sets my mom wanted? waaay out of my budget! lol.)

as much as i love antique shops or old museums, the thing that really gets to me are the dolls. there’s just something about their seeming innocence and beady eyes that make it hard for me to edit the pictures at night. (because even if they give me the creeps, they have this hopefully not demonic pull on me that compels me to take photos of them. (by far, the creepiest of them all i found at balay negrense.)

tyabb packing house is actually a complex of vintage shops — which is properly called tyabb craft village — with tyabb packing house another one of those shops but i collectively call the whole place tyabb packing house anyway. because erroneous as it is, that’s the name stuck in my head so i’m going with it.

of course, there’s so much more to see in there (heaps!!!) than the photos jeff and i took on that trip. it’s just that we weren’t really sure if you’re allowed to take pictures, although some staff were kind enough to accommodate us.

on that day, i fell in love with this decommissioned vintage train which they turned into a restaurant. it was so cool. sure, inside was pretty tight but you can just imagine what train rides were really like back then. probably cramped and noisy and perhaps not very comfortable at all, but nonetheless, i was really happy just being able to see what it must have been like before.

as it was a restaurant, we ordered their scones. they were okay, which is a code for me that it was pretty much so-so. too thick, if you ask me. i like my scones sliding gently down my esophagus, and not feel like my throat’s been jammed. but other than that, the vintage mug that jeff’s hot chocolate came in looked nice. if that’s any consolation.

you wanna know what else rocked in that place? the bookshop! thousands of books — old and new — stacked next to each other in a dizzying array of shelves categorized according to authors’ names or genre. i spent most of my time happily lost in there.

meanwhile, jeff spent a whole lot of his time at the camera shop, talking to the owner about camera stuff with all the passion that can only come from avid photography enthusiasts and checking out different lenses and asking about adaptors and discussing the merits of vintage lenses, etc etc etc. when all was said and done, jeff blew his money on 3 vintage lenses. cash.

him and the old bloke are bestfriends now.

all in all, i have to say it was a pretty nice saturdate. =)