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Published: September 4th 2010
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Yesterday, we took a trip to Melbourne to do some more exploring of the city. I had uni in the morning so we didn't make it to Melbourne until early afternoon!
As soon as you get out of Southern Cross station you get the 'Melbourne feeling' it just feels good being in the city, amongst all the high rise buildings, hustle and bustle, there's always something happening that's what I love about Melbourne, plus the buildings are amazing.
First we headed to Federation Square to the visitors information centre, probably something we should've done the first time we went to Melbourne. Anyway there were plenty of maps and leaflets to look at, there's too much to do in one day so we decided we wanted to see the laneways - Melbourne's hidden city, walk around Southgate nearby the riverside and go up to the Eureka Skydeck.
Whilst in Fed Sq we watched a clown/performer - similar to what you would find in Covent Garden in London, a crazy woman came along and started shouting at him saying 'your soooo boring' in this weird voice lol and rambling on about other things we couldn't understand. She was actually funnier
than the guy performing lol.
Anyway after we decided what we wanted to do, with the help of our trusty maps we took the tram to Degraves Street and Centre Place - two of the laneways. We've been to Degraves Street before but last time we didn't really take it all in there's so much going on it's hard to know where to look. This time we decided to 'embrace it' my phrase of the day lol. Both Degraves and Centre Place are small lanes with bars, cafes and shops down them, all open planned so everyone is sitting outside on these tiny little stools in the centre or at the edge of the cafes/bars. They were both really busy, that's why we found it hard to take it all in but we managed to stop somewhere that was cheap to buy a can of Coke. We sat down for a while just looking around at what everybody was up to, the laneways are very quirky and funky places, I really liked them. We've heard there are so many, it's hard to discover them, the one's we went to are the more populated and common one's. Hopefully we will
discover a few more when we visit Melbourne again.
We then went to find Chinatown - it was very similar to the Chinatown in London, rows of Chinese restaurants, I would say it's bigger thou. They also have a mini shopping centre which felt like China in Melbourne (not that I've ever been to China before).
After a short walk round we went to find Hosier Lane, known for it's graffiti and art. I was expecting it to be similar to Centre Place with cafes/bars but it had nothing - except graffiti. There were some really good pieces, the whole lane was full of different forms of art, we found a 'papering' I think that's what they call it, of Edward Scissorhands, it reminded me of Rachel! It was a funky little street, definitely worth a visit!
Southgate was our next venture, on the other side of Yarra River. The riverside is lined with cafes, restaurants - very posh, people were drinking champagne and smoking cigars! It was a nice place to walk around, the sun began to come out as well so we took a few photos. Nearby are the Botanic Gardens, which we walked to,
by this time our legs were so tired! For some reason althou there are trams we always walk I don't know why but we only caught a few trams throughout the day, by the end of the day we wished we would've caught more!
We wanted to have dinner somewhere later on but we didn't know where, everywhere we looked was pretty expensive, so we decided we would go back to Chinatown to try and find an all you can eat buffet. But, we couldn't find one and we got lost trying to find Chinatown again!
Because we couldn't find anywhere and we were both tired we said we would go on the Eureka Skydeck, catch the early train home and get a chinese takeaway instead, yummy!
So we went back to the riverside, to the Eureka Skydeck on the way there we spotted what we thought was a shopping centre. We went inside to discover it was actually part of the Crown complex - hotel, casino, shopping centre, restaurant! It was VERY posh inside Gucci etc shops, we saw all the businessmen drinking and talking 'business', the reception part was very grand it had a chandeler
ceiling, a massive water feature and huge stairs - reminded me of the Titanic in a way. We felt so common walking around in our trainers and casual clothes, but it was good to see! Melbourne's own idea of Las Vegas I thought to myself.
After getting distracted by the glitz and glam of the Crown we stepped outside, back into reality and carried on our way to the Skydeck. It cost us around $28 to go up to the 88th floor which according to their website is the highest viewing platform in the entire Southern Hemisphere, impressive! The lift that takes you up, goes SO fast you are at the top in 40 seconds - I felt a bit sick, Liam's ears began to pop. I said to him I feel like we are in the glass lift out of Willy Wonka lol.
Once we reached the 88th floor we looked outside the glass windows to view Melbourne from a different perspective, everything looked so small! We timed it right as we went up at dusk, so we were able to see Melbourne in the light and when it began to get dark - the lights looked
beautiful. They also had an outside viewing area, it was pretty windy and cold but a great view! The telescope you didn't have to pay for so we were looking around the city and we peered inside the offices of ANZ you could see the people moving around and Liam was looking at the AFL score at the MCG.
We aimed to get the 7pm train back home, so left the Skydeck in order to catch the tram back to the station. We jumped on the nearest tram and arrived at the station on time! 'All passengers on platform 4B the train to Geelong is going to be delayed for 20 minutes' Oh great! We weren't going to be home until 9ish - we couldn't wait that long to eat so we ended up running to the nearest Nandos and scoffing our faces so we weren't late for the next train! Luckily we managed to get the 8pm train back home, after a long and tiring day we were back home at 9.30pm and ready for bed by 10 as were so tired!
We had a fun day and both love Melbourne as a city, there's still so
much more to explore! 'Til next time x
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