The drive to Melb’n was a bit longer than I anticipated and luckily the directions I had were very straight forward, but when we arrived, we had to drive down to a parking garage at least a quarter mile away and then lugged our stuff back over the Yarra River and to our hotel.
Luckily, even though it was only noon, they allowed us to check in early. Our hotel was neat but tiny. Pretty much you could be in the bathroom – which had a glazed door which with the light on silhouetted whoever was using the toilet…, you could stand beside the luggage at the foot of the bed, or you could crawl onto the bed. …Pretty tiny. It reminded me of our cabin from the liveaboard.
However, tiny traded in for excellent location. We grabbed a map from the front desk and headed to the Queen Victoria Market – which really was pretty awesome. It was probably the biggest market I’ve ever been to and was an incredibly eclectic, ethnically diverse flea market that ran into a gigantic farmers market that ran into a huge meat and fish market that ran into a cobbled together, delicious food court. All of it was packed and full of men and women shouting in different languages selling their wares and it really reminded me of the images you see of the market streets in Asia and Daniel’s stories about shopping in Hong Kong. It was really neat. We managed to find the rest of the gifts for our family and had luckily looked at souvenirs enough to tell junk from decently legit and were able to pick our good deals. We also had a great Middle Eastern meal and I introduced Daniel to souvlaki and I enjoyed a really good falafel.
After hitting the markets, we dropped off our goods at the hotel and then headed out to explore some more. We walked the south bank along the Yarra and then cut back across the river to Federation Square – a city landmark known for its extremely unique and contemporary architecture. We enjoyed a drink on the square and then headed back to the room to pack before going out for dinner. We wanted to get the heading-home-packing done before it got late and wanted to go out and enjoy our last evening. So after wrestling with our bags and putting the hand scale Daniel’s mom got be for my birthday to good use, we decided we were actually going to be able to make it back with all of our stuff – and really, we did pretty well keeping luggage down on this trip.
So we headed back down to Southbank for dinner – I really wanted kangaroo steak and we had spied a restaurant down that way that had it on the menu. We had tried roo steak on the boat and really liked it and I was amazed at how tender it is – it’s really good. So we enjoyed our last meal and strolled back – the Crown Entertainment building (which was a massive movie theatre, bowling alley, casino, beer garden, and about eight other things) had these propane powered towers that did a fire show that was pretty neat to watch and the city of “Melb’n” was really pretty at night.
We decided we really like visiting cities – there’s so much to do and see and wander to and discover. And after a nice stroll back – and seeing that the bar in our hotel was offering a US Fourth of July special – that included Bud Lights, Hooter Shots (if you provide the hooters), and XXXX beers (which btw we discovered is the really gross cheap bud/miller version of Australian beer). The specials just made us laugh…and gain an appreciation of what they consider an American special. Kinda sad.
And with that we headed to bed – bracing ourselves for our eternal July 5th.
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