Two Days in Melbourne

After much time in the car on our Aussie road trip, we were ready to treat ourselves a little bit in the big city. Melbourne, which was the initial capital of Australia before the seat moved to Canberra in 1913, was a very charming city, and like Sydney, was a very big city with a lot to see. However, unlike Sydney, we felt that two full days was enough for us to see everything we wanted in Melbourne. 

We checked into our Airbnb, located right in the center of the city in Southbank. It was a room in an apartment building on the 26th floor, with a stunning view! Seriously, this was perhaps the nicest Airbnb we have ever been to! The host had an amazing espresso machine we used each morning, and the building had a gym, sauna, and large lap pool. 

Our first day there started out a bit rainy, but not so much to keep us indoors. We spent most of our time exploring the streets and alleyways. It seemed as though every alley we passed through was crammed with pop up restaurants, mostly Asian cuisine, all of it looked and smelled delicious. What we ate confirmed what our sense of smell had suggested. Another cool thing about wondering around this city is seeing all of the street art - whether it’s legal or not, there was a lot of graffiti all over, most of which was really tasteful. That afternoon, we went to the State Library of Victoria (which was more like a museum). We don’t typically go to a lot of museums while traveling. The paintings and art depicting various histories were lovely.

On our way back to our Airbnb we stopped and watched some street musicians for a while, before stumbling across a rooftop bar. We had to take advantage, since the rain had subsided and the sun was shining, we got ourselves a couple of drinks and watched the people pass by down below. Later that night we took advantage of the gym, pool, and sauna. 

The second day in Melbourne was spent much like the first - exploring parts of the city we had yet to see. We stopped by a large green space, which we initially thought was a park, but turned out to be a war memorial. Growing up in the United States, we didn’t hear much about the Australian’s involvement in either world war, but many Aussies fought and died in both conflicts. Afterwards we made our way to the famous Prahran Market, the scent of which was an assault on our hungry stomachs. We tided ourselves over with some falafels from a street vendor in the market before ordering some stir fry from another one. We continued walking further away, heading towards the pier to hopefully see some penguins near sundown.

We stopped for dinner at a bar called the Lucky Coq, which had a painting of a giant rooster as its mascot. There is better food to be found in Melbourne, so if you’re ever there, you can probably skip the Lucky Coq. After dinner, we went down to the pier. The wind picked up and became a little chilly, and it was very crowded. Apparently this is one of the only places to see penguins in Australia, so everyone gathered around to try and get a glimpse, which we were fortunate enough to do! What a little cutie he was!

Unfortunately this meant we were far away from our Airbnb after dark, not something we are usually fond of. After starting the walk back, we didn’t see any cabs, and there were very few cafes that had WiFi we could use to call an Uber. Looking at the map, we realized that we had more than an hour walk ahead of us! We must have looked distressed, because a local on a bicycle stopped and asked if he could help us out. He turned on a hotspot and let us connect to his WiFi to call an Uber. It is our experience that people all over the world are wiling to go out of their way to help total strangers in times of need.