Marvelous Melbourne

Melbourne rocks, I’ve decided. This morning we had a bus tour on our agenda – called “Marvelous Melbourne.” Cheesy name, great overview of the city.

It’s larger than I’d thought, though feels intimate with tons of cafes and little streets that you can disappear into and find all kinds of great shops and restaurants. Easy to get around, too.

We stopped at Fitzroy Garden, one of many green spaces in Melbourne (which is known as the garden city of Australia).

About Fitzroy:

Permanently reserved as a public gardes in 1848, the greenscape includes
• an ornamental lake
• Conservatory
• Cooks' Cottage - a house where James Cook reputedly spent some years of his childhood (the cottage was in England at that time).
• Sinclair’s Cottage
• Model Tudor village
• Fountains and sculptures
• Band Pavilion
• Rotunda
• fairy tree

and more. Fairy tree? I love Wikipedia – must have missed the fairy tree.

We checked out the botanical gardens – lovely flowers, strolled by the village, fountains, sculptures, etc., then carried on with our tour. Our second stop was for coffee and some time at the Royal Botanic Gardens. Lovely, too, but we headed to the nearby Shrine of Remembrance.

It was built between July 1928 and November 1934 in remembrance of the 114,000 men and women of Victoria who served and those who died in the Great War of 1914-1918. The Shrine was designed by two Melbourne returned-soldier architects, and was officially opened in November, 1934. Since then, it has been a growing monument, with other memorials added to the site to mark the service of successive generations. The Shrine of Remembrance is Victoria’s largest and most visited war memorial and is probably Melbourne’s most recognized landmark.

A lovely stone building, it has a balcony overlooking the city, an area for quiet remembrance in the center w/ skylight, lists of names of those whose lives were lost in combat in surrounding hallways and downstairs posters capturing the painful essence of war and death, as well as paintings, videos and other historical memorabilia.

Other highlights of our bus tour: gorgeous Victorian architecture throughout many of the neighborhoods, lovely old churches – gorgeous sandstone and brick, numerous bridges, Melbourne’s sporting facilities – a cricket game was taking place at the “G” later in the day, tennis courts being prepped for the Australian open, facilities used for past major sporting competitions, etc.

On the remainder of our bus tour we got great views of the river and other waterways, green spaces, the huge Victoria market and more. Lovely city.

At Victoria Market we parted company with the bus and wandered through the huge maze of stalls – hundreds of them – with general merchandise, food court, deli, meat market, fruit and vegetable market, organic market, etc. Ava scored a necklace (she’s the jewelry queen on this trip), Claire a hair clip, me a skirt and Joe – time with us.

We had lunch at the bustling food court – exposed brick area where we scored a counter with stools to eat pizza, a cup of corn (what a cool thing -- kernels of corn in a cup, you choose the seasoning) and fresh fish ‘n chips. In the market Ava was captivated by someone painting names in Asian figures.

We walked back to the hotel – busy streets with a wide array of businesses. Then we took the lift up 88 floors to see the view from the world’s tallest residential building (Dubai is builing one even taller as we speak).

Great views, obviously – mostly glass walls with telescopes trained on specific sites in the area.

From there we went to the Greek precinct for dinner. We were told it’s shrunk – more Asian influence in the area – but were pointed to a traditional Greek restaurant, which was fabulous. White and ocean blue inside, pictures of Greece decorating the walls and some of the best food we’ve had since leaving the U.S. We brought our own bottle of shiraz, tasted and purchased at the Victoria market earlier in the day.
We had the Greek sampler menu: fried cheese, sausage, lamb, squib, shrimp, pita and dips…it was all fabulous. Even Ava got past pasta to sample a wide array of Greek menu items.

For dessert we went a couple doors down to a dessert shop – superb baklava.
Too tired to walk we hailed a cab; wouldn't you know our driver was an Indian man (Punjabi) who owns his own cab company in Melbourne.