Australia: Part One (Melbourne)

We wanted to include a quick note of thanks here to Teri and Bryan and Steve and Terri (Kyle's parents) and Tim and Chris (Nicole's parents) for all of the hospitality while we were home for a brief time. This trip simply would not be possible without you guys! And congrats to Tess and Lucas and Nate and Megan, we had a blast celebrating your marriages!

Back to the blog:

After nearly 48 hours of travel, which included 4 flights, a shuttle bus, and a long walk to our hostel, we had finally arrived in Melbourne, Australia. This was our fifth continent of the trip! We had gotten in pretty late, so we checked in, got some food (surprisingly our first McDonald's of the trip...they call it Macca's over here), and went to bed. Our hostel in Melbourne ended up being a 10-story tall building with a huge kitchen, lounge area, and movie room. We had stayed in places like this before, made for moving masses of people in and out, and knew it was a good place to get lost in the shuffle a bit as we recovered from the long travel time. We also knew the big kitchen would be a bonus for easily cooking up some healthy meals...although the hostel did offer up free pancakes every morning so that was sort of a wash. It's also good to note here that it is currently winter in the Southern Hemisphere, so during our time in Melbourne it was around 40 degrees at night, with a high of around 65 degrees each day.

We had planned on sleeping in the next day but woke up earlier than expected, excited to explore the city. Melbourne tops many lists of "best cities to live," or similar, because of it's cleanliness, access to public transport, culinary scene, public parks and trails, and entertainment. But what excited us most was Melbourne's reputation for having some of the best cafes in the world. Allegedly the coffee is poured so well here that baristas are recruited for high-end coffee shops around the world. True to the legend, there seemed to be cool, unique coffee shops on every corner. It was tough deciding which one to go to! Nearly every day we hit one or two, and the first morning we stopped at one that was Turkish themed (which we really enjoyed after recently spending time in Turkey), including the obligatory baklava on the menu, rugs for sale, and lamp-making classes on the weekends.

After coffee we headed over to the Victoria Market. The market was a giant complex of both outdoor and indoor spaces that included fruits, vegetables, meats (including kangaroo meat!), cheeses, some food stands, wine shops (alcohol in Australia is sold in places called "bottle shops"), and craft stalls. We picked up an array of vegetables to throw into our dinners over the next few days. In addition to the free pancakes (they provided the batter, you had to cook them yourself), there was also free rice and pasta so we had a base for some bowls with fresh veggies and fried sausages.

On our second day in Melbourne we decided to get a run in, and went to the nearby Yarra river trail. We had planned on going much farther than we actually did, but stuffing ourselves with free pancakes that morning caught up to us and after a couple of miles of syrup burbs we had to walk it back home. We spent the rest of the day knocking off some of the Melbourne landmarks, including the Flinder Street train station, Federation Square, DeGrave's Laneway, the Nicholas Building, the Block Arcade (we got another great cup of coffee here), and the National Library.

That evening we headed out to the suburbs to a pizza joint owned and run by the Greek/Australians we had met in Thailand (John, Steve, and Con). We picked up a couple of bottles of wine on the way (Australia is a big wine producing country, so it's relatively cheap). When reviewing the restaurant online we didn't see any drinks on the menu but we did notice a "BYO" note, which is apparently a common thing in the city, although it was really strange to us. Imagine bringing your own booze into a fine-dining place back home! Although the restaurant was a bit out of the way (an hour-long train/bus combo) we had promised that if we made it to Melbourne that we would come to see them, so that's what we did. The food ended up being incredible (we had focaccia, eggplant parmesan, and a lamb pizza). The company was even better, as the guys shut the place down early to have a few beers with us...which turned into shots of ouzo that included the table next to us. We parted the pizza place feeling a little tipsy, with plans to meet the guys again for dinner in the city a couple of days later. (Note that we still had our own full bottles of wine as the restaurant clearly had drinks on hand).

We spent a lazy Saturday walking off the ouzo hangover at the Royal Botanical Gardens. The gardens were a huge, sprawling complex of over 8,500 different types of plants. Because it is winter down here there weren't many flowers blooming, but there were still plenty of other things to see, including giant eucalyptus trees (native to Australia and a major food source for koalas). After the gardens we grabbed a cup of coffee by the river (they have a river walk area with a bunch of cool restaurants, most of them with some sort of all-you-can-eat-and-drink brunch options). We then went back the the Victoria market one more time to people watch and see the additional hustle and bustle on the weekend. After that we went home, cooked some dinner, and popped a movie on in the movie room at the hostel.

On Sunday morning we went on another run of the Yarra river trail (with less syrup burps this time) before getting ready for our big event of the day: an Australian-rules (AFL) football game. Australia has 4 brands of "Footy" that they regularly watch: AFL, National Rugby League (Australian rugby), Super Rugby (which is international-rules rugby), and soccer. On top of that, they regularly watch American football (NFL) too. With such a sports-obsessed culture, we were hyped to experience a live game. We arrived at the famous Melbourne Cricket Ground stadium about an hour beforehand and grabbed a couple of general admission seats to watch the West Coast Eagles take on the Richmond Tigers. With the draft beers, hot dogs, and fight songs chanted throughout the stadium we felt right at home...until the match began. The rules of the game are simply bizarre, with a combination of running, passing (via pitches backward or punts forward) and kicking through goalposts. It was also played on a round field, and with too many players on the pitch to count. After awhile, though, we got the gist of the rules and we were soon cheering and booing along at the right moments with the rest of the crowd! Following the game we went to the Stomping Ground brewery, and took an evening stroll through the Fitzroy gardens on our way home.

That night was the final night of the Melbourne Firelight Festival. The Festival included fire shows out over the water, fire dancers, live music, food trucks, and burning flame artwork. We were just able to catch the end of it, but made note to see much more should we ever be in Melbourne at this time again in the future.

On Monday we headed down to the beach. Since it was winter it was too cold for us to really enjoy a traditional beach day so we, instead, went to Brighton Beach to check out the "bathing boxes." These were a series of colorfully painted sheds that the owners use to change in and to store their beach-day chairs, towels, and toys. They were really cool to see, especially after we found out that these dinky little sheds sell for hundreds of thousands of dollars each on the rare occasion they go up for sale. We grabbed a quick cup of coffee at a café nearby (we went for "Magic" coffees, a Melbourne stable of steamed milk poured over a double espresso) and then headed back to the city center (CBD or "Central Business District" as the main spot in every Australia city or town is called). We walked the south bank of the river where they have cool artwork displays and a fire show that happens every hour. We also tried to visit the National Gallery, but couldn't figure out how to get upstairs to the free displays...it turns out that they were closing so they had all of the escalators in the down position only. On our way back home we stopped for a Melbourne staple snack: hot-jam doughnuts. Kyle had been going on and on about them all week, so it was (in his opinion) way overdue!

That evening we met up with John and Con (and his wife Irina) again. Steve was absent as he had a shipment of 30 tubs of grapes arrive that day and he was busy making homemade grappa. We found a Chinese spot for dinner and wrapped it up with drinks at a rooftop bar, where we were able to see the the hourly fire show up close and personal. We left with many hugs, handshakes, and promises to meet up again sometime in the future.

We had an amazing time in Melbourne, but it was quite a bit of city time for us, so we were ready when we hopped on our flight the next day to Ballina. Next stop: the Australian Bush!