It was the September holidays and we realised that the last couple of winters had been so mild that we hadn’t had an opportunity to wear our winter clothes. Christine organised a couple of tickets to Melbourne so we could remedy that situation.
We were up around four to make the journey to the airport. We were coming from the Sunshine Coast and the journey there was pretty straight forward with only a couple of minor slow spots. We cruised into the Airpark at Brisbane airport and caught the bus to the terminal. The fight was delayed but only by a little bit and before long we were on our way to Melbourne.
Now most airports in our major capitals including Brisbane and Sydney are connected to their respective cities by a train. Not so for Melbourne, the city that is renowned for its incredible train and tram network is connected to its airport by Uber or a bus that runs every 10 mins or so. So it was that we found ourselves in a massive queue of people who were waiting for the Skybus to take them into the city with the incredible tram and train network. Even the Gold Coast is in the process of building a tram line to their international airport, then again those guys were also able to host the Commonwealth games without too much fuss. As we drove away from the airport in our bus we passed the queue for the Ubers and it was even longer.
We took the Skybus to Southern Cross Station which was, as it would turn out, really close to our accomodation at the Pegasus apartments. We didn’t know this at the time and we also didn’t know that they could have put our bags in the cloak room so that we could have explored the city luggage free. We got off the Skybus and hopped on a tram that promptly took us in the wrong direction.
China Town
Once we got a bit of a handle on the trams, which are free around the city centre, we navigated our way down to China Town. The China Town in Melbourne is enormous and well worth a visit. We found a great little restaurant where we picked up some Singapore noodles, rice and a steamed bun with red bean filling. We then made our way down to Degraves street where we chilled and ate some pizza in another cool little restaurant.
In the afternoon we signed in to the Pegasus apartments, had a siesta and then went for dinner at a little filipino place, Inasal Express, that was walking distance from the apartments. After dinner we checked out the pool and gym on the way back to the apparent and also discovered that the Queen Victoria markets were located just behind the appartments.
We didn’t get up particularly early, which is ok in Melbourne as the whole place doesn’t get up particularly early. We strapped on our running gear and went for a jog down to the docklands area. We jogged around the docklands and had a bit of a look at the newly renovated areas.
The Queen Victoria Markets
We returned to the appartments, showered and then made our way over to the Queen Victoria markets. We picked up a charging block as we had forgotten to bring one and I managed to get a nice Australian made leather belt. We checked out the massive line for the doughnut van and then decided to find some food.
We made our way to Lune Croissants, a place that Christine had wanted to go to, and joined the line of people waiting to get in. It was around this point that I came to the conclusion that Melbournians love queuing up, perhaps this is why they haven’t connected the airport to the city with a train. The food was pretty good, we had a couple of their pastries and a couple of their hot chocolates.
We then made our way down to Degraves street to try one of the Vietnamese pork rolls from a place that we had seen yesterday. I can assure you this was absolutely delicious, we sat at one of the benches to enjoy our catch and sat next to a bloke who by all intents and purposes was a Vietnamese pork roll connoisseur. He pointed us to a number of establishments where you could find a variety of delectable pork rolls to tantalise the taste buds. We had a couple of smoothies and then navigated our way back to the apartments to have a siesta.
Brighton Beach Huts
In the afternoon we took it upon ourselves to go on a mission to see the Brighton Beach Huts at of all places, Brighton Beach. Now it would later turn out that we could have simply caught a 20min train ride from Finders Station but that wouldn’t have been anywhere near as much fun. Instead we caught a tram as far as we could, then walked for ages, rode a scooter through some pretty dodgy traffic, something we would certainly have told the kids off for if they tried it, and then walked some more. We arrived well after dark, thankfully they have lighting at either end of the beach huts so we were still able to get a photograph with the beach huts. We then decided it was time to find some food before trying to figure out how to get back to the city.
We found a spectacular little Italian restaurant where we ate delicious pasta, drank champaign and sparkling table water and finished off with a shared sticky date pudding. The waitress was from Argentina and she explained that we could easily catch the train back to Flinders Station. After dinner we wandered down to the train station where with the help of four police officers we secured our Myki cards and caught the train back to the city.
Southbank
Once again we didn’t get up particularly early and when we did get up we sat and watched a filipino drama on the television that Christine had finally managed to make work. The weather had turned and it was now rainy and cold outside. We strapped on our cold weather gear, checked out of the hotel, left our luggage in the cloak room, picked up some hot chocolates to go and headed down to take a look at the Southbank precinct. We wandered around the Southbank mall and picked up a couple of rain coats.
Once we were done with the Southbank precinct we decided to get some lunch from Degraves street. We settled on a place that was serving vegetable soup, due to the weather we were able to sit in the middle of Degraves street under the umbrellas which were doing a reasonable job of keeping the rain off. In reality if we were after soup we should have gone to the soup place that is right next to the shop where we got our Vietnamese pork rolls the day before. This will be on the menu for our next Melbourne adventure.
The Botanical Gardens
After lunch we decided to navigate our way to the botanical gardens. We topped up our Myki cards and found a couple of trams that were going in the right direction. One thing about Melbourne, with the lack of sunshine I had trouble deciding which way North was, as such there were a few times we hopped on trams only to find that we were going in the wrong direction. Thankfully this was a relatively straight forward issue to resolve in that you just needed to hop off and cross to the other side of the road.
We made it out to the gardens, saw the shrine of remembrance, walked around the gardens and then started the journey back. We collected our bags, picked up another couple of hot chocolates, walked down to the Skybus terminal and caught the bus back to the airport. This time our plane was delayed by around an hour. We ate some food at the airport and did our Duolingo.
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