Our Melbourne holiday

We just came back from our Melbourne trip where we spent a week there.  To Andrew’s delight, we flew down, he really doesn’t like to be in the car for an extended period of time now.  We stayed at Medina on Flinders Street.  It was a great serviced apartment, it had everything we needed.  A tram stop was just outside and Southern Cross train station was only about 5 minutes walk.  Since we used public transport for the entire journey, it suited us perfectly.  Andrew, of course, was so happy to hop on and off the trams, trains and buses for a week!

It was hot when we arrived on Thursday.  We had a little wander in the evening after dinner at Old Town Kopitiam.

We headed to Scienceworks in Spotswood.  It’s an awesome place. Everything was so hands on.  The kids really liked touching everything.  There was a sports related exhibit that looked familiar, as it turned out, we’d seen it in Questacon last year!  Adjoining Scienceworks was an old pumping station.  Years ago, sewage from Melbourne city was collected there and be pumped out to Werribee.  The equipment was massive!  The music they played made it a bit creepy.

We visited Werribee Open Range Zoo on Sunday. We found this experience to be awesome. We’d never gone on a safari before.  Upon arrival, we were given a timeslot to go on a special bus to see the animals in a savannah.  There were no cages, the animals just lived more or less like in the wild, except they didn’t really have to hunt for food. There were giraffes, hippos, zebras, antelopes, camels, buffalos and wild dogs.  What I liked best were the rhinos.  They came quite close to us and we had to drive off quickly just in case they bumped into us! After getting off the bus, we did a walking trail and saw some more animals. It was worthwhile trip.  Hannah decided that zebras were her favourite animals while Andrew loved seeing the meerkats. Even John grew a new fondness to giraffes.

We also went to Melbourne Zoo.  It was a rainy day but it was the only day we could go because the weather was getting progressively wetter.  Still, there were a lot of people.  This zoo is nice.  It’s smaller than Taronga Zoo and since it’s mostly flat, we didn’t get tired so quickly. We had to hide in shelters whenever it rained heavily.  Seeing the giraffes from the ground level was a different experience to Taronga Zoo.  The seals and penguin display was well constructed.  The monkeys enclosure was well laid out.  At Melbourne Zoo, we got much closer to the animals than other zoos.  It felt like we almost touched the orangutans.  It was a thoroughly enjoyable experience.  We’d initially thought that we’d be “zooed” out since we’d been to 3 zoos in a week (we went to Taronga 2 days before going to Melbourne).  We’d planned to stay in Melbourne zoo for a couple of hours, we ended up staying there till our legs got too tired!

Other places we visited include State Library of Victoria (amazing building, the kids enjoyed the exhibition on the Australian picture books, the illustrations were magnificent) and the National Art Gallery’s Kids Corner in Federation Square.  We only visited the outside of Melbourne Museum because we didn’t have time to see the exhibits.

We did some shopping and lots of eating.  The kids were spoiled rotten with treats.  Hannah asked me last night what we were having for desserts and I said fruits, she then told me that fruits were not desserts!!  Oh, dear!  How is she going to re-adjust to normal life and normal eating habits again?!

We finally got to explore some famous eateries like those in Degraves Street. We loved the atmosphere there.  Melbournians are so relaxed.  Every cafe in Degraves Street and the street adjoining to it (I can’t remember its name) was filled with customers and this wasn’t even the weekend!  Those laneways resembled Hong Kong hawkers style eating except they were Western cafes.  It was there that we discovered a Belgian waffle shop called Waffle On.  The waffles were delicious!  They also sold some very yummy baguette sandwiches!

Our other eating discoveries include paellas at Anada on Gertrude Street. It’s a relatively small tapas bar in Fitzroy.  The paellas were tasty.  It wasn’t till our search for Hu Tong Dumpling House that we stumbled on the famous Flower Drum Restaurant (in its hay days, bookings were made months in advance).  Hu Tong has great reviews written about them, so bookings had to be made in advance, luckily, we managed to get in with one day’s notice.  The decor was suitably oriental, the dumplings weren’t too bad.

We had a wonderful time.  We got to “lose ourselves in Melbourne”.  We look forward to going back

~ by tracychung on January 17, 2011.