AspiringNomad

We arrived in Melbourne and headed straight to the ‘Skybus’ which was to take us to the centre of the city. We sat on the upper deck of the bus and trundled along the big roads leading to the city, it wasn’t long until the Melbourne skyline revealed itself to us.
A perfect backdrop for the next 2 days in Melbourne. It is much bigger than Sydney with high rise buildings that make the Sydney CBD seem small in comparison. The bright blue sky made the buildings look even more dramatic and I was instantly gripped by the scale of the place.
We swiftly made our way to check in at the Ibis Central hotel with Arron’s directions. With a hangover and a fairly exhausting trip to Melbourne, we relaxed on our beds to recuperate. Of course, we upgraded our room so we could enjoy a couple of nights on two single beds and although the bathroom ‘frosted doors’ didn’t leave much to the imagination, we were more than pleased with our room. Once we had revived a bit, we nipped out to the local pizza takeaway place and grabbed ourselves some much needed food to have back in our room. We sat on our beds, in our pajamas watching the Australian Open to get us prepared for what to expect the following day.

Arron had booked us onto a walking tour in the city on the Monday morning. At 10:30am we met our guides at the State Library. We had just enough time to grab something to eat and get a refreshing iced coffee before the tour started. Our guide was called Daniel and for the next 3hrs, he didn’t stop realing off fact after fact about the history of Melbourne, it’s landmarks and how it came to be. It was hot, it was a lot to take in but it was all so interesting, Arron and I were hooked from start to finish. I was concerned that being a ‘new’ city, there wouldn’t be much history to share. But judging by the froth forming at Daniels mouth from talking so much, clearly, I was wrong! From ghosts at the Princess Theatre to the infamous 1850 gold rush, Arron and I are now well clued up on all things Melbourne and it has inspired me to do a walking tour in Sydney to learn more about the city I live in.

On the verge of heat stroke, we made our way to the nearest air conditioned facility, which happened to be a sports bar chain called The Sqealing Pig. We freshened up and walked a few hundred meters into Melbourne Park where the Australian Open is held. The lack of people trying to get in was soon explained after the kind lady at the security gate told us that with our tickets, we couldn’t enter until 5pm (for the evening session). That wasn’t a problem though, we walked back along the Yarra River and settled in a small bar along the bank for a couple of drinks to pass the time. 5pm soon rocked up and we made our way into the AO. As we walked through, taking in the sights and sounds, we felt a strange similarity to being in a theme park and even queued up for one of the rides. Well, that’s what it felt like, but we were in fact just having our photo taken in front of the AO tennis ball sign!
We first stopped at court 3, for no particular reason but we enjoyed watching a Woman’s under 17 doubles game for a little while before moving on to the 1953 court that was hosting a Mixed doubles game. I was getting to grips with the scoring and rules while Arron was happy soaking in the atmosphere and watching the game. We sat for a while laughing at how angry the Polish player was getting, admiring their tennis attire and slowly baking in the heat!
We wandered around the grounds of the AO for a while and indulged in a little something to eat before going into the main arena to take a seat at the highly anticipated men’s singles game. We were ushered into the arena in between a game and told we were on row PP. As we walked higher and higher into the heights of the arena, it soon became apparent that pricing section 11 meant that we were positioned in the furthest possible seat from the court! We may as well have been sat with the seagulls on the top of the building! The tennis players were like ants and the noise coming from the boxes behind us was more than distracting. I was, let’s say, unimpressed and felt a huge disappointment for Arron who had been looking forward to getting into the Rod Laver Arena all day!
I had accidently sat us in seats a few over from where we should have been, so we moved around with some other people up in the yves, who were also probably struggling for oxygen in the heights on the arena.
Once moved, our situation got even worse as I was then sat behind the tallest man in Melbourne! Despite being on the row in front and apparently lower, his head perfectly obstructed my view of the court, leaving me to watch the tennis on the screen! Enough was enough, and after little deliberation, we decided to enquire whether we could move seats, even if it was at a higher cost.
Off we went to the ticketmaster box and were greeted by a friendly (and attractive) man who told us we could upgrade our seats to section 13. Section 13? As if our luck hadn’t been bad enough! We umm’d and ahh’d while considering the cost to upgrade. But I refused to hike back to row PP, so we bit the bullet and risked section 13. We needed a little time out from the seat situation, so we got a couple of Somersby Ciders and made our way to our newly allocated seats. As we were ushered to our seats for the second time, our faces said it all. With big smiles, a drink in hand and finally, a seat that was worth the money and didn’t require an oxygen pack. We settled in to watch a great game of tennis between Alex De Minaur (aus) and Alex Michelsen (Usa).
Once the match was over we all bundled out of the arena. The weather was so warm we couldn’t tell if we were outside or not. The air was thick but cooler than it had been during the day. We were in walking distance of our hotel and even stopped off for a Chinese takeaway en route. Absolutely exhausted, we crashed on our beds, fell asleep and didn’t wake up again until about 9am the following morning!

We had planned to go to the Botantical Gardens on the Tuesday, explore the city and catch some rays as it had been such nice weather. So we started by getting the ‘iconic’ (as the man on the Skybus described it as) Tram to the gardens and entered a World War memorial that was positioned on a hill exposing a fantastic, unobstructed view of the city with a border of greenery courtesy of the botanical gardens. Surprisingly quiet and stunning, we endured the heat to take in the sights before walking down the pathways of the gardens, past the small lakes filled with lotus plants and through to a little cafe that was nestled in the center of the park. We had a delicious salad and continued on our way back to the city. Arron was delighted when this route took us right past a football team who were training on one of the sports fields, Arron assured me that they are a pretty good team called Melbourne City FC!
We were soon back on the iconic tram and heading into the centre. As much as I joke about these iconic trams, I must give a shout out to them, because they are completely free to use in the center (although, they’re very relaxed on the whole payment thing, so we didn’t pay at all during our trip). A lot of the trams are still the originals, very traditional and yet all air conditioned, so really they are pretty iconic after all!
We explored as much of the Art Gallery of Victoria as we could manage and were impressed by the amount of free exhibitions we had access to. Arron sat in the middle of the room while I perused around and called Arron over when I found something interesting, or utterly ridiculous. Like the drain pipes stuck out of the wall which they claimed to be art!
Back in Melbourne city we explored a few streets known for their street artwork and went to Section 8. A bar that we past on our walking tour that lured me in from the moment I saw it. Funky, quirky and exceptionally cool. Serving drinks from an old shipping container than was meant to be a temporary fixture but has now been there since 2016. Arron and I felt like we stuck out like a sore thumb but embraced our awkwardness, ordered a couple of their special iced drinks and sat on the upturned beers kegs while taking in our surroundings!

We recovered from the heat as we chilled in our Ibis hotel room later that day and slowly got ready to head out for the evening. I had arranged to reunite with Tommy Ando, whom I met in Vietnam a few months ago and have since seen in Sydney. I joined him ‘under the clocks’ (if you ask anyone in Melbourne where that is, they will know), so I felt like a proper local. We went to AFLOAT which is a bar, you guessed it, that floats along the river Yarra. We sat with our feet in a little pool at the end of the bar watching some tennis and catching up. Arron joined us about an hour or so later and we downed a few beers before realising that we were probably a bit later for dinner! Tommy Ando had let us down with the restaurant recommendations but advised us that the Crown Casino had a bunch of eateries at the bottom that would probably be open late. A little tipsy, we walked to the casino to find two places still serving food. Arron and I made it 3 of three and indulged in our 3rd takeaway of our trip! We parted ways with Tommy Ando and headed back to our beds for another very long night sleep!

Our last day began once we checked out of the Ibis and left our luggage with the concierge. I had wanted to explore the coast of Melbourne as I had heard very mixed reviews. The weather had turned a little on the Wednesday morning and the wind had picked up but we didn’t let that change our plans and hopped on the tram to get to St Kilda, a popular coastal area of Melbs. Battling against the wind and convincing ourselves, it was still warm, we walked up the Pier to see if we could spot any of the little penguins that I had heard can be spotted here. To our surprise, there was one little penguin who we assumed was young, settled into the rocks and foliage, sheltered from the weather. We didn’t hang about too long and walked back to one of the cafes on the sea front. We chose to sit indoors and had a delicious big breakfast. Arron claimed that it was the best big breakfast he had ever had which was high praise indeed for the Beachcomber Cafe! Unfortunately the big breakfast was not such a fan of Arron, I waited about 20mins for him to return to the table from the restrooms, he assured me that a peace offering was unnecessary but we were best to make our exit as swift as possible!

I had been wanting to go into the State Library following our walking tour so we headed there to end our trip in Melbourne. Before heading inside, we were drawn to the amount of activity that was happening outside. There was a busker on the pathway, hundreds of tourists taking photos, a game of giant chess being played and locals lounging on the grass. But what caught our attention the most was a woman who we now refer to as ‘Pigeon Lady’. A young woman with brightly dyed pink hair sat crosslegged on the grass feeding the pigeons and letting them land and walk on her. At multiple times, she had a pigeon on her head while holding a pigeon in each hand. We found the perfect spot to sit perplexed at this strange behaviour but unable to look away. She even began a small trend and another lady came and sat with her! Never mind the diseases, I guess they just really loved pigeons.

We finally tore ourselves away from the quality entertainment outside and headed into the library. We saw the original armour that Ned Kelly wore during his final shoot out with the Police. We saw the beautiful architecture of the main library hall. We wandered through their exhibition of original artifacts of some famous authors, and as Arron was quite happy to sit in the middle of one of the halls, I walked around the Rennie Ellis exhibition. Content with my cultural intake for the day, we sat in the sun outside the front of the Library to soak up the rays. I closed my eyes for a few minutes and listened to the gentle sounds of the city, with the sun on my face following a great few days in Melbourne, I was completely content.

We started our journey back to the airport thinking we could get the skybus even though it was an airport that we knew was on the outskirts of the city. Completely chilled with no urgency, we went to buy a ticket to discover that the next skybus didn’t leave for over and hour!! Panic stations. We googled our best route and it told us to take a train to a station closest to the airport and then request an uber for the final couple of miles. It was a risk, but we didn’t have much choice, with the train leaving in a few minutes we ran through the station, luggage in tow to find that you have to purchase a MYKI card to get through. Similar to an Oyster card, we were both a bit annoyed that when we asked the train worker if we could get through using our phones, he had said yes. Nevertheless, I checked that there was another train leaving in 15mins, so we had time to purchase a MYKI card and even snuck in a couple of Sushi rolls to have on the train.
Heading out of Melbourne felt like entering the Serengetti desert. For miles right and left, there was just arid, dry land. Arron and I soon realised that if we looked hard enough, we might actually see a Kangaroo and sure enough, throughout our journey, we saw about 3 groups of them! After about 30mins, we arrived in a little outback village called Lara. A few other people got off the train with us. The realisation that we were now in a strange town about 50km south of Melbourne hit. But I followed what Google Maps advised and used my app to book an Uber. There may aswell have been a tumbleweed drifting across the car park it seemed that deserted, but miraculously, my uber request was accepted and not only that, he was in the same car park as us and pulled up immediately! We were on the home straight to the airport. As much as Arron insisted that we could have walked from Lara to the Avalon Airport, the long grass on the side of a big Motoway in the hot sun with our luggage didn’t seem too appealing!
After about 10 minutes, we turned down a small tarmac track that was leading to what looked like an old airfield. As we pulled up outside a building no bigger than a supermarket we considered that maybe we had come to the wrong place. But the big sign on the front of the building saying ‘Avalon International Aiport’ attempted to reassure us. We got out of the car and stood in disbelief for a few minutes before cracking up laughing at how strange this airport was. There was not another human in sight and music was blaring from the old style speaker by the entrance. It was as though there had been a zombie apolocypse and we had just turned up to the aftermath without knowing.
We headed inside to thankfully see people who were not zombies at security and some other skeptical looking passengers!

We hung around in awe of how weird the airport was, it was like we had been transported back in time. A cross between an old post office, a bank and a small airport! Unfortunately, due to the lack of passengers, there was more attention on the weight of our luggage than we had hoped and so in a desperate attempt to reduce the weight by about 1kg, I took a few things out of my case. It did the trick and even more surprisingly the lady offered us a free upgrade to extra leg room on the front row of the seat! We kindly accepted the offer and we were on our way through with our new tickets. Through the most relaxed security gate I’ve ever witnessed and into the canteen that housed one cafe, a bar that was closed at the end and a small gift shop with an impressive amount of books.
Arron treated himself to some M&Ms and I got some Skittles to snack on while we waited. As it happens we had arrived miles before the Skybus did that we had tried to catch back in Melbourne. We smuggly sat with our phones on charge, scoffing our sweets with our upgraded plane tickets!

The plane journey home was thankfully fairly uneventful. We were up and down even quicker than the way there and being in the front row meant we were first off the plane, back on the trains and soon back to the quaint suburb of Kirribilli. With our bags quickly put away and pur pj’s on, we rolled back into my small double bed with the window open (just how I like it, much to Arron’s dismay).

Our time in Melbourne had been brilliant, fast paced and busy, sunny, eventful, interesting and fun! A great city that I can’t wait to go back and visit at some point. But our journey in Australia continued on now we were back in Sydney, it is down to me to show Arron all the best spots that I know over the next few days before he heads off to Cairns next week!