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Published: February 12th 2007
In Melbourne, our trip intersected with the Australian vacation of J's aunt and uncle from Alaska. The four of us spent an evening together, catching up and sharing a great meal at one of the many Italian restaurants on Lygon Street. We have been so fortunate to have the opportunity to see family along the way on this trip!
We had quite a difficult time finding a place to stay in Melbourne as it happened to be during the Ashes cricket match. Cricket sells out the city's hotels? You must be joking, you say. Well don't laugh, it's true! Luckily we found a room on asiarooms.com for a reasonable price at almost the last minute.
We were really impressed by Melbourne as a city of 3 million, comparable to Seattle in size. The public transportation system is excellent with trams and buses crisscrossing the city. We stayed in the suburb of St. Kilda, near the Botanical Gardens. It was just a 15 minute tram ride from there down to the edge of the Yarra River. The Southbank area is built up with lots of cafes, shops, and upscale restaurants. From there, you can cross one of several pedestrian only
bridges to the north side. To get an overview of the city, we went to the observation deck in the Rialto Building which claims to be the tallest building in the Southern Hemisphere. From the top we could see the city, the harbor just outside the central business district along the river, and even the Jumbotron in the packed cricket stadium! We stuck around for "Rialtovision", basically a 20 minute tourist commercial for Melbourne. It was actually pretty good (if you get over the cheesy music) and made us want to come back for a longer visit sometime!
After visiting two different zoos in Australia, we had yet to see a platypus so we decided to check out the Melbourne Aquarium. It was pretty small, packed with kids on summer vacation from school, and did not have any platypuses. We did watch the divers go in to feed the sharks though.
One of the best ways to see the city is from the river itself so we pulled a coupon out of our Melbourne visitor's guide and jumped on a Melbourne River Cruises boat for a one hour tour. We cruised through the downtown to the industrial part
of the port area. The guide seemed to be brand new to his job and was a little stiff with the commentary and jokes....but it was fun nonetheless.
We found ourselves in Federation Square one afternoon. It was packed with people soaking up the sun and intently watching the cricket match on a huge screen. Australia soundly beat the Pommes. We visited the Australian Centre for the Moving Image, just off the square to see an exhibit on the history of optical illusions; it was a bit of a disappointment.
Wish we had time to drive the Great Ocean Road and go to Phillip Island to see the penguins!
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