Melbourne is one of those cities for which we have heard lots of good things. Some people said it was Australia’s version of San Francisco, some said its more like New York, some even said don’t bother going there, Sydney is the only city worth a visit in Australia! Not surprisingly we arrived not quite knowing what to expect. By the time we left, Melbourne joint our elite list of top five cities outside the US*
We spent two days to exploring the city of Melbourne and another two exploring the wineries and beaches just outside. One of the things that got us excited about Melbourne was the Melbourne Bike Share program. Similar to the programs in London (fondly known as Boris’s bikes) and around most European cities (and now some US cities including DC!) it costs about $2 for 24 hour access to the bikes which are free to use for unlimited 30 minutes intervals. The catch in Melbourne: Australia has a strick helmet law and all riders, regardless of age, must wear a helmet while cycling at all times. This is a slight problem in downtown as most people are not carrying helmets in their tourist day pack or in their laptop case. Melbourne has addressed this by creating a network of places where you can rent a helmet for about $3/day. Luckily for us we were able to borrow some helmets from local friends and we had no problem finding available and conveniently located bikes all over the CBD (central business district).
Melbourne is relatively flat and has great bike trails all over the city and super wide bike lanes on most of the major roads through the CBD. Much less stressful then cycling in London!
Our first stop: the Melbourne Tourist Information site on Federation Square. We haven’t make enough use of the tourist information sites in the Australian cities we visited thus far, instead relying on predominantly on Lonely Planet, but we probably should have. The Melbourne TI did not disappoint! We found a ton of self guided walking tours, complete with maps and historical information, got information on the best bike paths and even picked up some tips for our future wine country trip.
Surfs up!
Next we were on our bikes and off to The NGV International Art Museum. The major art museums in Melbourne are free to enter and host a cool collection of Australian and international art. Well worth an hour or two, and it had just started to rain as we entered, so great timing.
But that is not rain streaming down the window, this is the view out the waterfall wall, which is a giant glass wall with water streaming down.
Walking from the Art museum we headed towards the Lanes, which are the alleys in the CBD filled with characteristic restaurants, cafes and shops. On our way we stopped at a café in the middle of the Yarra river for lunch. Very cool spot, great haloumi cheese burgers and a great view. Not to mention a unique setting!
Riverside seating for everyone!
First stop – Degraves coffee shop.
One sign that Melbourne is serious about coffee: every coffee came with latte Art and a great presentation!
Melbourne is known for a few things amongst Australians: the people are way into sports (especially Australians Rules Football), are connoisseurs of great food and have very high expectations regarding coffee. Our self-guided Lanes walk took us around the CBD through many of the cities lanes, each with its own set of unique shops, some trendy, others with a lot of class.
Our favorites were Centre Place, Degraves Lane and Hardware Lane.
Now that we were loaded up on coffee and had walked/ biked our way across the city it was time to check out the Melbourne brews scene. We peddled east towards 222 Brunswick Street, Fitzroy and the Little Creatures beer hall.
Little Creatures is a brewery based in Palmyra, Western Australia. We had sampled their beer at other Australian stops, but the beer hall is the environment where it was meant to be sampled, and it just tastes better here!
The next day we were back on the bikes and off to see The Melbourne Shrine.
The Shrine of Remembrance is the Victorian memorial for the wars of the past century in which ANZAC troops have served, similar to the Cenotaph and the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in the UK and US. As none of the Victorian soldiers who lost their lives in WWI were returned to Australia, the Shrine became the site of remembrance and mourning for their families. We had a very good free tour of the memorial where we learned about the design of the Shrine, history of the ANZAC service and more facts on the city of Melbourne (which was meant to be the second city in the British Empire, and was the fastest growing city in the world EVER in the late 1900’s during the gold rush).
Keeping honest to our pattern of finishing hot days with beer we then ventured to the Belgian Beer Garden. Melbourne has many beer gardens (take note San Francisco, this is something we are missing!), but the Belgian beer garden had been highly recommended (a favorite Melbourne spot of our local friend Nathan’s), and lived up to its reputation.
While it was fairly quiet on Tuesday at 3pm when we stopped in, it was clear that this is an awesome place to spend a hot Saturday in the sun.
Finally we were off to St Kilda. St Kilda is the “colorful” neighborhood of Melbourne that is full of characteristic coffee shops, eateries and cake shops. Lots of cake shops.
Of all the cake shops, our friend’s Nathan and Libby swear by Monarch, a St Kilda institution since 1934
After a walk through some of the coolest streets in the area we headed to the St Kilda beach and pier to watch the kite boarders taking advantage of what was becoming a windy day.
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This guy was showing off for us
Big air!
So far: Melbourne has deserved its reputation as one of the worlds top cities. Now its on to the wineries and beaches to see if it can keep the title.
*Dennis’ list of top non US cities: London, Berlin, Hong Kong, Melbourne, Amsterdam. Robyn’s list: Berlin, London, Seville, Istanbul, Melbourne. And in case you are curious, some of our top US cities include SF, Boston, New Orleans, Washington DC and Denver.