Downtown Signature

Although I lived mostly in big cities in the US, I also travelled and spent a bit of time in small towns. The same in Oz. We live in Melbourne, but have travelled extensively in Victoria and South Australia, browsing through several small towns where we often stayed in a hotel overnight. Never more than one night, because we always drive through to a new place... The itinerant foreigners. But every time we had to stay in a small town, I took notice of its downtown, which is called “town centre” here. Like in the US, it’s most often a small street that has a café, maybe a bakery and a gas (petrol) station, and a hotel. The hotel always has the name of the town and invariably looks like the one in the picture. Victorian style, built in the late 1800s or early 1900s and never updated, just repainted. The hotel serves more the purpose of housing a gambling spot “Tatts” and bar where locals enjoy a few (too many) drinks. The few hotel rooms have irregular shape. One time, we even had a room in which we could enter only directly from the street! Bathrooms and hotel structure probably never change. The bathroom is sometimes with a shower room like in a gym, but also with the faucets for hot and cold water separated by the entire length of the sink. Try mixing them to wash hands! Anyway, the air of these old hotels is antique in itself, and the dusty, lacy balcony adds to it.