Farewell to Melbourne!

Sebel Reef House Hotel, Palm Cove-  As you can tell from the blog location on our last two posts, we have moved on to the second part of our trip.  Before we get into the details of our new location we wanted to write one last time about our first.

We absolutely loved Melbourne.  The city is defined by its love of sports and amazing food so what is not to love for a couple that appreciates both of those things.  The energy of the city was noticeable right away.  We thought it might have just been because of the Australian Open but from what we heard from several people there is always some major sporting event going on in town.  The first night we walked around the city at night and were amazed with how active every street was.  There are cafes, bars, restaurants, shops…anything you could want to do available at just about any time. 

As for the look of the city, it is really beautiful.  Nearly every street has large trees either lining the sides or going right down the middle.  All of that green in between the huge buildings really makes for an interesting contrast.  About a half mile down the road from our hotel is the Yarra River and all the restaurants and activities surrounding that.  We didn’t really “discover” everything around the river for a couple days and when we did it was like opening a whole new world.  I have a feeling if we ever went back we might stay closer to that area because it was just so nice. 

There are other things that make Melbourne very unique.  The first we learned on our shuttle ride to our hotel.  The driver explained that Melbourne is one of the only cities in the world where you make right hand turns from the far left lane.  This is done due to another unique aspect which is the trams that run right down the center of the streets.  Because trams have the right away (and the steering wheel is on the right side of the car) in order to turn right you have to wait for all traffic to pass and make sure no tram is coming.  I know it is probably hard to picture but let me just say I am VERY glad we did not have to do any driving in that city. 

While we loved most things about the city, there were a few things that we weren’t real fond of.  One is that we could never seem to get enough cold water.  First we had a hard time getting water at all and then we just had to drink it warm.  There was plenty of free coffee and tea around, but never any ice in the water.  Since it's summer here, there isn't much on tv (not that we are around to watch it much anyway).  One thing that's always on is cricket, but no matter how much we watch it we still have no idea what's going on.  Another (more so for April) was that the bathrooms only had hand dryers; not paper towels.  The dryers never had enough power to actually dry your hands and the air was way too hot, especially considering the temperature outside was so warm.  Overall…not too much to complain about.

We took several pictures of some of the more interesting foods we ate and wanted to share those as well.  Here is our very mini tour of Melbourne food!  Very good tasting, but don’t ask for a ‘take-away’ container…that must not be common here because we got some strange looks.



We needed a snack during one of the tennis matches. 
Chips or 'crisps' sounded good, but the flavor choices were original, sea salt, or chicken. 

 

I don't remember what this was called, but it was basically kangaroo carpaccio. 
There were so many different components, but they worked together so well.  One of our favorite dishes.



Kebabs...April almost ordered them at a restaurant expecting shish-kabobs (These are basically like gyros).
  That would've been a shock.  These kebabs were a hit with us, especially for 4th meal.

 

Pie face...we stopped at this place a few times.  We tried several small pies...
chocolate, lemon, bacon/egg/cheese, and peppercorn steak.  So good!

 

French crepe with chocolate, bananas, and ice cream. Delicious! 
We tried going back a few times for other flavors, but the small cafe had pretty limited hours. 
Such an interesting little cafe though.

Sichuan Chicken from the Sichuan House. 
We saw the restaurant on food network and had to check it out. 



Fried quail with sea salt crust (aka tiny chicken wings :))

The gelato we ate as we strolled down the St. Kilda Pier.



Steamed mussels in napoli sauce. 
We weren't really sure what to expect, but it was very tasty.