Australia, day 15 & 16: Melbourne

Day 15

We arrived at MEL at 6:40 and an hour later we had our next rental, Mitsubishi ASX compact SUV from Enterprise, ready to go. Our destination in the city was Fitzroy (via Bell St to avoid tolls) where we stayed with friends for couple of days. We had breakfast and coffee in local cafe, and discussed what to do. We were not prepared for the visit too well, but our hosts had a good plan and instructions for us, plus good info on architecture etc. We just did what they recommended. Couple of hours later we were in St Patrick’s Cathedral, and walked around the city for the rest of the day: first to Ian Potter Centre Federation Square, then across Princes Bridge and along Yarra River to Royal Botanic Garden of Victoria  ☞ rbg Melbourne   (recommended). On the way back we walked by Shrine of Remembrance, visited National Gallery of Victoria,  walked by Federation Square again, St Paul’s Cathedral, along Collins St, then to St Patrick’s  Cathedral, Brunswick St and George St.

Visit to  ☞ National Gallery of Victoria (NGV) at Ian Potter Centre gave us second major experience with indigenous art, after introduction in Sydney: novel and important for us. Australian art and International art galleries were interesting too, but felt familiar. We later spent couple of hours  in NGV at St Kilda Rd, including special exhibit “Terracotta Warriors & Cai Guo-Qiang”, perhaps pointing to our future travel destination.  We had to spend some time wandering around Botanic Gardens, of course.

Day 16

We reached Victoria Market (recommended), our first destination of the day, by tram 11 from Brunswick St to Elizabeth St (conveniently for us re-routed via La Trobe St). We did grocery shopping for the next leg of our trip and we had lunch at food court: marinated seafood from Wood’s deli and laksa from Canton Malay Cuisine, and bread from local bakery. Sounds like fast-food, but it was all very good. Topped-off with Kenyan coffee at Market Lane Coffee and cannoli. We tried three or four different tropical fruits from the market as well, so much flavor.  Piotr was day-dreaming about taking all the seafood to cook at home in Chicago. We spent two hours at the market. After a short walk, we were reading travel books about Melbourne/Australia at ☞ State Library of Victoria, not much time to do it. Some of the many visitors were reading books as well. We walked through ☞ “World of the book” exhibition, not big but interesting. Tram 16 took us to next destination: St Kilda. It was partially sunny, but very windy and quite cold day. We spent the rest of the afternoon there zigzagging between Fitzroy St, St Kilda Pier and Beach, Ackland St. We were hoping to see penguins, but none returned from fishing before we left.  We then picked-up a couple of reds at Ackland Cellars, jumped on tram  96, at the end stop on Ackland St, to Nicholson St. We  walked home a few blocks via Johnstone St.