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Published: September 13th 2011
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Melbourne is a great city and we really enjoyed our stay here. It was good to stay for more than a week so we were able to see the place properly.
At this time of year it is winter, coming into spring so it is quite cold - just like home! Despite the temperature, the weather has been good and mainly sunny with the exceptional rain storm or two.
On day one, we went into tour the inner city - the Melbourne Visitor Information Centre in Federation Square is great for information on everything from transport to tours. You can book tours through them too but they charge extra. We also went on the Melbourne City Tourist Shuttle, approximately 90 mins long, it has running commentary and is hop on-hop off. The City Circle Trams are also free and have commentary, however they don't cover the same distance and are used by commuters looking for a free tram.
T
he next day we went into St Kilda - this is an area with good bars and live music on Fitzroy St, and Acland St has nice cafes, clothes boutiques and lovely cake shops. St Kilda Beach is a lovely
walk too, and the Palais and Luna Park are nice to look at, although we didn't go inside.
We got around the city mainly by tram and walking, the trams are very regular although they stop before 1am on most routes so you have to flag down taxis after that. Whilst we were in Melbourne, we went to Melbourne Zoo which was really good and plenty to see (as you will see from the photos!) We also went to Melbourne Gaol, which was really good - they have a tour of the police watch house where they pretend to arrest you! It also has Ned Kelly exhibitions as he was held in that gaol. We took a free tour in the Parliament of Vicoria, which was intersting too and had quite a few similarities to the British system.
There are also lots of parks to walk around and if the weather was better, we probably would have walked a bit more! We walked through part of the Botanical Garderns and visited the Shrine Of Rememberance which was good, and has a great veiw of the city too.
The Queen Vic Market and South Melbourne Market are also good.
The Queen Vic has more tourist stalls, but the South Melbourne Market has great stalls too and a bead shop that Alana loved.
We didn't go out very much when we were here, but we went into a few bars during the evenings - there are so many bars and night clubs here. The roof-top bars are worth seeing although cold at this time of year. There are good bars in Fitzroy St, which we went out into on a Friday night and Pj's on the Southbank is a good irish bar. We went on a bar crawl organised by Underground Melbourne which was good, and if you are new to Melbourne is worth going on to meet others. We went to Pugg Mahones, Eurotrash, and another nightclub which I can't remember the name of! We went to the Croft Institute too which is a cocktail bar that is made up to be like a science lab and has a gym on the top floor - worth going to see and you wouldnt even know it's there as its down an alley way. The price of alcohol is generally more expensive than back home in the bars and off-licences,
but there are happy hours if you go out early enough.
Clothes in the smaller boutiques are generally dearer, but if you know where to look, you can get some bargains. DFO on South Wharf and Harbour Town have outlet stores which are really good for brand names and also have smaller shops too.
There are endless options for eating out here too - everything from malaysian, thai, chinese, indian, italian, greek to burger bars and fish and chips. So there was always a good variety to eat, plus we were spoiled with lovely home cooking at our Aunty and Uncle's house.
Whilst we were in Melbourne, our Aunty and Uncle took us along the Great Ocean Road and we stayed in Port Fairy (formally known as Belfast!) Normally to go along the Great Ocean Rd they have tours, which are 2 days or more and are at least $180. Really at this time of the year, there was not much point in stopping as it was freezing. But the veiws were beautiful, (quite a bit of the road is actually forest which we had no idea about!) We stopped at Bells beach and the 12 Apostles which
were lovely. Port Fairy was also nice but very small, there are a few pubs there too (and a few scary ones!) But we had a nice dinner at the Caledonian (or the Stump to the locals.) We also had a lovely breakfast in Clonmara, which we nearly missed driving by - great food and really friendly.
Overall, we loved our stay in Melbourne and will hopefully be back soon!
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Stephen Hutchinson
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Seen that before lol