A Day in the Life of Melbourne
I was pleasantly surprised to wake up early Friday morning to sunshine. We had a packed day ahead of us: a stroll thru the Queen Victoria Market, hopping on the tram to take us to Flinders Lane (a 10 min ride) for some breakfast (yes, kosher breakfast IN THE CITY!), starting our touristy trail thru the city of Melbourne by 10am and getting back to the hotel to collect our bags and drive to St. Kilda (a suburb of Melbourne) for Shabbat by 4pm.
Queen Victoria Market is simply amazing. For those familiar with the shuk in Jerusalem, this is the shuk on steroids. A huge tent full of fresh fruit and vegetable stands, an indoor market of cheeses, breads, pastries, meats, fish, teas, and coffees, and rows upon rows vendors selling general goods. The fruits and vegetables looked so fresh and so delectable; given how much of this stuff they eat, AC and RSC would have been in heaven. If only we had planned to stay in the city for more than a day and had a full kitchen in our room, I would have cooked up a storm (well, a vegetarian storm at least). A few highlights from the market was the seeing the Sarah Palin jacket on sale and the American Doughnut Kitchen van parked right outside.
Before leaving DC, we made sure to print out all of the relevant kosher food information to have handy when the need arose. Once we arrived in the city and got to know the streets around us, we realized that one of the kosher bakeries was located just 10 minutes from our hotel! How spectacular! Turned out, this bakery is part of a chain called Glicks. They have 5 locations in Melbourne and one in Sydney. I’d like to meet the owner and propose that he go international. Seriously folks: not only is this a bakery; they also make their own bagels, pizza, and sandwiches! We ate our breakfast and picked up lunch for the road while we were at it. And since this place is downtown, the majority of the customers are not Jewish; they just come here for lunch and don’t think a thing of it. What a concept…
At 10am, we made our way to Federation Square, which has become the meeting place for people of all ages. We walked around and made our way to the National Gallery of Victoria (NGV). After a 30 minute stroll thru parts of the museum, we made our way to Southgate, an area right on the other side of the Yarra River (the official boundary of the city itself is the river) and walked along the promenade. By then, it was already 11am, the sun was shining, and we were enjoying a glorious spring day.
The City of Melbourne has a terrific public transportation system. Besides for the trams, which run along the middle of the street, there are buses and trains, all of which run very frequently and are pretty easy to figure out. In addition, Melbourne runs a free tourist shuttle, which stops at 11 designated areas in the city along its route and runs in a loop. We decided to split our day with walking and taking this shuttle between sites.
Our next stop after Southgate was the Royal Botanic Gardens, which was simply beautiful. The Gardens sit right outside the city on a huge plot of land and showcase every type of plant that can be found in Australia and the surrounding countries.
After the Gardens, we hopped on the tourist shuttle to take us north to the Melbourne Museum. We ate our lunch in their café and bought our tickets to stroll thru their galleries. The Melbourne Museum is a bit different then other museums: it is certainly not traditional, where you stare at pictures on the wall and/or look at artifacts behind glass. Instead, their displays are very hands-on and deal with more present-day subject matters. While the galleries tended to be more scientific in nature (human body and forestry, for instance), it’s not a science museum. It also had a display on the history of Melbourne, but it’s not a history museum either. To me it seemed like a museum modeled in a post-modern tradition (very sleek, not many walls, etc) without much of a direct mission, besides for education. It was certainly interesting and had some character to it, but seemed a bit scattered.
Our last stop was Lygon Street: Melbourne’s own Little Italy. The four-block stretch was lined with cafes and clothes shopping and by 2pm, was hopping with a post-lunch crowd and kids who finished their uni classes (university) for the week. The weather was still unbelievably gorgeous. Little did I know what was to come just 5 hours later.
Queen Victoria Market is simply amazing. For those familiar with the shuk in Jerusalem, this is the shuk on steroids. A huge tent full of fresh fruit and vegetable stands, an indoor market of cheeses, breads, pastries, meats, fish, teas, and coffees, and rows upon rows vendors selling general goods. The fruits and vegetables looked so fresh and so delectable; given how much of this stuff they eat, AC and RSC would have been in heaven. If only we had planned to stay in the city for more than a day and had a full kitchen in our room, I would have cooked up a storm (well, a vegetarian storm at least). A few highlights from the market was the seeing the Sarah Palin jacket on sale and the American Doughnut Kitchen van parked right outside.
Before leaving DC, we made sure to print out all of the relevant kosher food information to have handy when the need arose. Once we arrived in the city and got to know the streets around us, we realized that one of the kosher bakeries was located just 10 minutes from our hotel! How spectacular! Turned out, this bakery is part of a chain called Glicks. They have 5 locations in Melbourne and one in Sydney. I’d like to meet the owner and propose that he go international. Seriously folks: not only is this a bakery; they also make their own bagels, pizza, and sandwiches! We ate our breakfast and picked up lunch for the road while we were at it. And since this place is downtown, the majority of the customers are not Jewish; they just come here for lunch and don’t think a thing of it. What a concept…
At 10am, we made our way to Federation Square, which has become the meeting place for people of all ages. We walked around and made our way to the National Gallery of Victoria (NGV). After a 30 minute stroll thru parts of the museum, we made our way to Southgate, an area right on the other side of the Yarra River (the official boundary of the city itself is the river) and walked along the promenade. By then, it was already 11am, the sun was shining, and we were enjoying a glorious spring day.
The City of Melbourne has a terrific public transportation system. Besides for the trams, which run along the middle of the street, there are buses and trains, all of which run very frequently and are pretty easy to figure out. In addition, Melbourne runs a free tourist shuttle, which stops at 11 designated areas in the city along its route and runs in a loop. We decided to split our day with walking and taking this shuttle between sites.
Our next stop after Southgate was the Royal Botanic Gardens, which was simply beautiful. The Gardens sit right outside the city on a huge plot of land and showcase every type of plant that can be found in Australia and the surrounding countries.
After the Gardens, we hopped on the tourist shuttle to take us north to the Melbourne Museum. We ate our lunch in their café and bought our tickets to stroll thru their galleries. The Melbourne Museum is a bit different then other museums: it is certainly not traditional, where you stare at pictures on the wall and/or look at artifacts behind glass. Instead, their displays are very hands-on and deal with more present-day subject matters. While the galleries tended to be more scientific in nature (human body and forestry, for instance), it’s not a science museum. It also had a display on the history of Melbourne, but it’s not a history museum either. To me it seemed like a museum modeled in a post-modern tradition (very sleek, not many walls, etc) without much of a direct mission, besides for education. It was certainly interesting and had some character to it, but seemed a bit scattered.
Our last stop was Lygon Street: Melbourne’s own Little Italy. The four-block stretch was lined with cafes and clothes shopping and by 2pm, was hopping with a post-lunch crowd and kids who finished their uni classes (university) for the week. The weather was still unbelievably gorgeous. Little did I know what was to come just 5 hours later.
posted by elanit | 6:07 PM
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