Melbourne: Great one day, Perfect the next...

... which is lucky really, coz we were only there for two days :-)

wow! what a whirlwind weekend! i'll try and cover everything, but basically if you ever wondered what you can do in Melbourne in 33 hours heres a few ideas:

Catch a skybus from the airport and see all the weird a wacky bridge designs and public art.

check in to the Mercure Welcome on Little Bourke Street. great central location, right next to Davy Jones's, unfortunately for Lauren, not THIS Davy Jones, but close enough.

head up Swanston street, checking out the shops, to the Queen Vic Markets. wow what an amazing place so many stalls, so weird to hear all the people shouting about their fruit and veges!!

stop in for a quick bite at the food court next to the market:


hold a snake:

which was really weird. the texture was not like i expected. kinda like a non-slippery eel. you can feel the muscles/scales contracting and expanding as it moves, but a lot colder and well, basically weirder.

after lunch, which was really our third breakfast (after on in NZ and one on the plane), we walked around the streets some more through all the mall/s etc down to flinders street and the amazing railway station. i was really impressed by all the buildings in Melbourne,. the old buildings were in good states, it was good to see older styles of architectire than Hamilton (i know you're thinking - wait till i get to Europe), but i was mostly impressed by the modern architecture. the new buildings were odd shapes, odd designs, heaps of variation and none of the hideous concrete sameness of Auckland.


next stop: Melbourne Aquarium. again: awesome. really cool and not too expensive, we had a great time looking at giant crabs, jelly fish, sharks, evil stingrays(I'm sure Lauren wanted to beat some up to get them back for Steve Irwin!) they had a cool tank that had the cast of Finding Nemo in it:


after the aquarium, we caught the free city circle tram around the city, past the Docklands,with it's cool sculpture, the Testra Domeand up tio La Trobe St again.

after a quick nap and a chance to put the feet up we caught a tram to Southbank and headed aklong the riverbank looking at menus trying to find food that i could manage. we found World restaurant, and after a really nice entree we settled down to a great main. Lauren had butter chicken, i had a steak sandwich and fries :-)

next stop Crown Casino, where we spent a good hour at the roulette wheel with our funds going up and down, and managed to walk out only $10 down. which is a pretty cheap hours entertainment really :-)


Sunday morning, bright and early we headed out for some Brekkie and i met some new friends:


we had breakfast at a cool diner, which had ferrari flags and uniforms etc. Lauren had the pancakes, i had the 2 eggs combo breakfast. the we headed down to flinders st Station and caught a tram to the beautiful St Kilda. We wandered along the art and craft market, that's been running since 1970, popped down to the beach, then went to Luna Park and had a great time riding (among other things) merry-go-rounds, bumpercars, crazy upside-down rides, ghost trains and even a pirate boat like rainbows end. a splendid time was had by all!



So after a tram ride back to the hotel to pick up our bags we caught the skybus back to the airport (through Carlton)and departed Melbourne. back to Auckland by 12:00 am, and hamilton just after two am.

Best Aeroplane moment: Either -Listening to Pink Floyd's "Great Gig In The Sky" at 35,000 feet (if you haven't heard this song - LISTEN TO IT!), or - Listening to Lauren crack up while watching Borat :-D
Best Shop Buy: Radiohead's OK Computer on Vinyl.
Best Market Buy: Laughin' Larry Mug
Best Food: Lauren really enjoyed her much-awaited Dim sims from the foodcourt next to the Queen Vic Markets.
Best Transport: The trams. so cool.
Best Building:





what a trip! Now it's time to recover, and get ready for the trip to Rarotonga in August :-)