Melbourne Part 1

Melbourne, in a way, was a vacation from my vacation.  As you know, my loyal readers, I'd started this trip with lots of "must-sees" like spending the day snorkeling the great barrier reef and a 12 hour tour of Urulu and Kata Tjuta.  My 5 days in Melbourne were more laid back.  I spent time in cafes, bars and just wandering around the arcades and many parks in the city.  I found Melbourne to be a beautiful city with really nice people.  It was a great place to relax, recharge and just hang out.

I really had way too many lattes and avocado on bread of some kind, but its always so good!  All around I found the food in the city to be excellent.  There were an amazing number of restaurants and cafes to choose from, particularly really good food from all corners of Asia.

Love from Melbourne in a cup

Avocado on toast (again), though you can barely see the toast!  This version had lots of tasty additions!

Vietnamese noodle bowl, popcorn and a Japanese beer

Throughout the CBD (Central Business District) or what you might want to call "downtown" there are lots of little alleyways or arcades filled with little shops and restaurants. They were also great ways to cut through parts of the city if it was chilly or raining.  Two of the main arcades are called the block arcade and the royal arcade.  Those are the first two pics below followed by some of the shops inside.

In addition to the arcades there is also a lively Chinatown.

The CBD is very walkable and I mostly got around on foot.  However, as a transit nerd I had to make a few trips on the city's trams.  There are trams everywhere as Melbourne is home of the largest tram system in the world.  The first pic is of route 35 - the city circle tram.  Its a free tram mainly for tourists that basically takes you in a loop around the core of the CBD.

One of my favorite parts of my time in Melbourne was tagging along to watch the AFL game with friends of a friend.  The city seemed to be going absolutely nuts over this game.  Australian Football is commonly called footy, and was described to me as sort of a cross between American football and rugby?  The two teams playing in the final were the Adelaide Crows and the Richmond Tigers.  Richmond is an inner suburb of Melbourne and was less than 2 miles from where I was staying in the CBD.  Adelaide is about 8 hours away by car.  The final game was being played in Richmond.  I'd say the game seemed more anticipated than the Superbowl is in the states.  Most business were closed the Friday before the game and lots of people had the day off work.  Was the game on Friday?  No.  It was on Saturday, but you got Friday off because if was "AFL final eve."  So really, the party got started on Thursday night where many of the bars in the city were packed.  Anyway, back to the game itself.  I watched while at a BBQ just north of Richmond. There were even footy themed donuts!

Spoiler alert Richmond won in an apparent upset!  So of course I had to go out and celebrate!  Haha, though there are no photos of that!

In my next post I'll wrap up the other sites I saw in Melbourne before moving on to the Great Ocean Road.