Days 20-21: Melbourne

Amelia Mazloom

Jun 9

5 min read

The Skinny if you're just here for the highlights: With just a day and a half in Melbourne, crammed in rooftop views, street art, a full-day bike tour and in-depth behind-the-scenes tour of the Australian Open grounds, and of course, excellent food. Melbourne was lively, sport-obsessed, clean, and very livable. Then, before we knew it, we were on a plane to Nepal.

Scroll down for pictures.

1 1/2 Days, Simply Not Enough

Our time in Melbourne was far too short-lived, but we packed as much as possible into our day-and-a-half in this fantastic city. We arrived at the Brady Hotel, Jones Lane location in the Central Business District (CBD) in the late afternoon. It was a really lovely hotel, especially considering the bargain rate, and we found the CBD to be a good, central location for our first trip, though we would probably stay in Fitzroy the next time around. That evening, we walked through Chinatown (which is massive) and checked out the street art on Hosier street (which was cool but in some places unfortunately defiled by carelessly splattered tagnames). We then walked the Yarra River Promenade, had homemade pasta and pizza for dinner, and capped off the evening with a drink at the QT hotel rooftop where Sean, the hungry, growing boy he is, found an entire second meal in a cheeseburger and fries.

From the bar, we enjoyed excellent views of the city’s unique skyline. We found Melbourne’s architecture particularly striking. Older civic buildings like the State Victoria Library, the grand Victorian-era facades, and the historic government and institutional buildings around the city (and especially in Fitzroy) anchored the city’s evident progression in a dignified history. And paying homage and respect to the intentional effort behind the construction of these older buildings, the new skyscrapers were all very unique and as much works of art as they are utilitarian, echoing the intention behind their older relatives.

Having skipped the second dinner, I was of course in the mood for dessert. I had hoped to try the famous frozen yogurt spot, Yo-Chi, but we were met with the same overwhelming line as Fergbaker in Queenstown, so we moved on to Gelato. After two dinners and a mega milkshake, Sean’s stomach was pretty pissed and he declared with newfound insight “I did not need that burger or that milkshake.”

Bike Tour of Melbourne

On our only full day in Melbourne, we decided to tour the city on bikes, and on our way to the rental shop, we grabbed smoothies and took a slight detour for coffee and an almond croissant at the famous Lume bakery. It was evidently touristy but every bite and sip was worth the short wait. In fact, we considered ourselves lucky because by the time we had our order in hand, the line that formed behind us would have been too long to justify. We continued on to Blue Tongue Bikes on Rebecca Walk– right on the Yarra just past Flinders Street Station and secured two full day regular bike rentals, which came with baskets and a helpful phone holder on the handlebars (we thought after the fact that e-bikes may have honestly been more convenient, but we were happy with what we had). The city is not terribly well designed for bikes, though we made our way around just fine, and helmets are both legally enforced and culturally compulsory.

Our homemade city tour began as we crossed the river and made our way along the Southbank of the Yarra. It's quite lively and offers engaging social spots like a padel/ pickleball bar and floating pool lined with tanning beds.

Melbourne Park

Home to the Australian Open and ‘Tennis World’ we were eager to poke around Melbourne Park and get a look inside MCG (Melbourne Cricket Grounds, the largest stadium in the Southern Hemisphere). After briefly seeing the outdoor practice courts and riding around to Rod Laver Arena, we decided to take the daily Tennis World tour. We were fortunate to be the tour’s only participants and had our guide Andrew, a 19-year Tennis World vet, all to ourselves. With our many questions, what was supposed to be a 1 hour tour very quickly (for us anyways, not sure about poor Andrew) turned into two full hours…

Andrew was so wonderful, gracious, knowledgeable and composedly enthusiastic. We saw the players walk and learned about the extensive coordination that goes into transforming it into the well decorated and smoothly operated mainline of the tournament that we see on TV during the hectic Open. We went into one of the two Women’s locker rooms, saw several players lounges where competitors are granted a $100 a day food allowance, and checked out a small portion of the tunnel network connecting the arenas. Rod Laver and Margaret Court are actually physically connected, and both are unbelievably intimate– the worst seats in the house, literally, are the boxes, and having visited one, we can say they have fantastic views.

I could go on and on about how impressive and well thought out the grounds and planning behind the Open are, but I won’t bore you as I did Andrew… I will note, though, that the beloved director of the Australian Open, Craig Tiley, after 14 years resigned his position early this year to take the helm of the US Tennis Association. With the impressive and innovative transformation he brought about to the AO, it will be exciting to see what he can do in Queens.

Gardens

Next stop was the Royal Botanic Gardens. They were lovely, certainly much nicer than central park for example– very well maintained and clean. But not long after we made our way inside, we were yelled at– no bikes in the garden. We did not see a single sign to indicate this but made for our quick escape, dodging 5 more condemnations along the way.

Food!

At this point we were both starving and with Fitzroy Gardens next on the itinerary, we headed past the park (this time well marked with no bike signs) and into Fitzroy neighborhood for sandwiches at the famous Hector’s– a from scratch deli chain started by a former Melbourne fine-dining vet who decided to go casual. My chicken salad sandwich was good, but Sean’s fried spicy chicken sandwich was out of this world, as was the potato salad.

Still a little hungry, we headed back to the South Bank and hit the South Melbourne Market (we had hoped to experience the Queen Victoria Market but on Wednesdays it's only open for the night market). The South Melbourne Market was filled with vendors selling everything from wool and clothing to fresh seafood, produce, meat, and baked goods. After a few overwhelmed laps we landed on getting a tray of fresh oysters.

Finally, I had been hoping to eat at a modern Mexican restaurant called Mamasita. It was booked up during our time in Melbourne, and we had tried and failed to get a table the previous night. This time, I called the restaurant 5 minutes before they opened, and the lovely host told us that if we could get there within 5-10 minutes he could squeeze us in (yippee!!). We ran over there and had the most fun and delicious meal. For Boston frequenters, it reminded me a lot of Citrus and Salt– very high praise. We enjoyed scallop ceviche crisps, street corn, refried beans, chicken taquitos, and overnight marinated beef brisket tacos. I can still taste it all.

It was a wonderful send-off before things would almost certainly get a little rough, at least food-wise, in Nepal and India.

Final Moments

The next morning at 3 am began our very long but not too bad travel day. We had a lovely experience flying Singapore air through Singapore to Nepal. And actually had some incredible lightning-crossed sunset views flying out of Singapore where we also saw about four times as many cargo ships queued from the sky as we had seen in Panama waiting their turn for the Canal.

While we were sad to leave Melbourne so quickly, we left with a hunger to return someday for the Australian Open.