Melbourne Saturday

The view from our room - late fall in Melbourne is still mild.
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I woke up at 5 in order to do some remote work (5 a.m. in Sydney/Melbourne = 1 p.m. the previous day in Denver). I was done by 8, then we had breakfast (just as hearty the second day) and packed up for the drive back to Melbourne. By this time we were both confident drivers so we made good time.

On the way to Colac we stopped at a small winery, Otway Estate, and sampled some local vintages. Only the whites were grown there as it’s too cool for reds, which are produced by bringing in grapes from other Victoria regions. But the facility is beautiful.

Who is this Matthew Flinders?

The man's got skills.
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Gassed up in Colac (regular unleaded was about $3.85 a gallon, reasonable by our standards and a bargain compared to Europe), then headed for Melbourne. Traffic on a Saturday morning wasn’t bad (Sunday afternoon is another story), only bunching up as we left Geelong. We arrived in Melbourne at about 2 p.m., then checked into the Hilton Melbourne “On the Park.”

We were rewarded with a nice junior suite on the NW corner of the 13^th floor. The views of Fitzroy Gardens, Treasury Gardens and the Melbourne skyline were great, and we decided to hang out for a few minutes and drink some wine and eat the cheese we bought the day before. A nap looked tempting afterwards, but we got going and walked around Melbourne instead.

Inside St. Patrick's cathedral - plain but dignified.
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Fitzroy Gardens was right across the street, looking lovely in the afternoon sunlight. Captain Cook’s boyhood cottage is there, along with an old conservatory building and some nicely manicured grounds (reminded me of London). The Melbourne CBD is laid out in a neat rectangle and while not spectacular like Sydney, is quite impressive in its own right. (While Sydney has the spectacular harbor, Melbourne just has the Yarra River.)

As others have noted, Melbourne feels a lot more like a European city, with shops and cafes everywhere and a sophisticated feel. And even on a weekend afternoon I noticed a more "dressed up" feeling in general.

Another bitchin' Falcon feeds Kurt's fetish.
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After peeking in the huge St. Patrick’s Presbyterian cathedral (quite austere inside without much stained glass; it was amber instead) we took in Chinatown, shopped a little bit, then found a Thai restaurant for dinner (very good, actually, with some excellent noodles).

I had to buy a pair of socks and managed to get a pair just as David Jones was closing. I also found a book called “Visions of Australia” on sale – letters and stories from early Australian settlers – it’s very interesting to find out about Matthew Flinders, for example, after driving down Flinders Street. Not to mention that little Captain Cook house in the park brought from England in 1934.

Chinatown was lively on a Saturday afternoon.
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We stopped and had a drink (it was Saturday night and the streets were busy), then walked past Federation Square and down Wellington Parade (lots of interesting old and new trams whizzing by) to our hotel.

It was almost time to go home but we’d seen Melbourne, which I had debated doing (there’s another Hilton at Tullamarine airport that’s very convenient for morning departures). I would like to come back and see more.