Melbourne (2025)
Day 1
After our two very long flights and a 9 hour layover in Doha, we finally arrived in Perth. I easily made my way through the e-gates at immigration, and as I walked through and turned around, I didn’t see Nick behind me and was confused. A few moments later, I see him being instructed by the staff to walk to the immigration officer. Fortunately, there was no line, so he was able to speak to an officer immediately who told him to wait while they checked their computer. And soon afterwards, he was waved through with no explanation as to why he was flagged by the e-gate system.
Later, we get to customs and as the people in front of us were told to head to the exit, we were asked to sit in the customs security area to be greeted by a customs officer. We’ve seen enough episodes of Border Security on YouTube to know that they take this very seriously, so we were a little concerned. It didn’t take long for an officer to show up and tell us the process (x-raying all our bags, searching our bags, and asking us questions).
It actually wasn’t too bad, and the officer was actually quite pleasant. As she was checking our bags, she gave us suggestions on where to go in Perth, and was shocked that we’ve been married for over 18 years because we didn’t look that old. And soon we were off to our hotel for our one night in Perth—tomorrow morning, we were heading out to our Melbourne for a few days.
We were both extremely happy to finally be able to sleep in a real bed, and we got some decent sleep considering how jet lagged we were. It wasn’t hard for us to wake up early to head to the airport for our flight. As we got into our taxi, the driver asked if we were heading to the mines to work, and we replied no. When we arrived at Perth airport, we saw many people in hi-vis jumpsuits with reflective strips, so it wasn’t too surprising that we were asked about working in the mines by the taxi. Nick did some quick research and discovered that mining accounts for about 50% of the industry in Western Australia. And with the large number of people, I sort of wondered if those working in the industry took day trips from Perth to the mines.
Security and boarding at the airport was also quite different from the US. At security screening, no one checked our boarding pass or ID, and they didn’t ask anyone to take anything out of their bags. Nick still got flagged, but that’s because he had a small pair of scissors, which security tossed because the blade was too long. They’re stricter than the US about the length of the blade, so that’s good to know for future Australia travel. During the boarding process, all we needed to show was our boarding pass, but no ID, so at no time during the entire process were we asked to show ID. I guess they’re really trusting here because you could easily exploit that to get on a flight if you wanted…
Our flight to Melbourne was uneventful, save for the fact that we were surrounded by a large French tour group. Once we landed, we made it to the Langham, which would be our home for the next three nights. It was about 3 when we got to our room and settled it, and we were a little hungry, so we headed off to Lune Croissanterie for their famous croissants. The was a short line out the door, but it only took about 10 minutes until we made it to the front. Unfortunately, at this time of day, they only had the plain and chocolate croissant available:
We also decided to order some flat whites to go with our pastries and found space at the communal bar. It didn’t take long for our order to arrive and it looked amazing:
The croissant was extremely flakey, so I get the hype around it, but is it the best in the world? That’s up for debate…
As we were walking to Lune, we were stopped by someone standing outside The Outsiders gallery saying that they’re having a free street art exhibition. We wanted to go to Lune first before they closed, so now that we had a snack and coffee, it was time to go to back to see the exhibit, and it was totally worth it. They had some fascinating art pieces and also a room full of Bansky:
While short, we still had a wonderful time seeing all the artwork and thinking about the commentary that inspired them.
We still had some time before dinner, so we headed the other direction from our hotel to walk to the Royal Botanical Gardens. We were lucky that the weather wasn’t too hot—it made the walk through the park much more pleasant. As we made it closer to the entrance to the Gardens, we saw Melbourne Park, home of the Australian Open. It actually ended about two weeks prior to our visit, but it didn’t seem like they closed off the grounds, so we headed over there and took some photos:
There was what appeared to be either a soccer or rugby match happening at John Cain arena, but even with that happening, it was actually quite empty in the park.
After that short detour, we made it to the entrance to the Royal Botanical Gardens, which is free, but does close at night. Even though we only had about an hour to visit the gardens, we didn’t feel too rushed walking through it and were still able to enjoy the lake and the various flora:
It was then time to walk to our dinner at Big Esso, a restaurant featuring indigenous cuisine. The menu featured exotic meats such as crocodile and emu, as well as some amazing sounding vegetarian dishes. We opted for some fried crocodile loin, charred pineapple and rice, baked purple potato and bread with warrigal greens. Their drinks also used local ingredients and were delicious:
On the way out of the restaurant, we noticed the public square out front was showing a Bruce Lee movie for the public to watch.
We called it a night so that we could wake up a little early for our first full day in Melbourne.
Day 2
The next morning, we grabbed breakfast at the hotel and headed out around 8:30 to see the famous alleys with street art: Hosier Lane and AC/DC Lane. Because we were there fairly early, there were very few people in the area giving us a great opportunity to view the art:
It was fascinating to see the restaurants and bars embracing the street art as part of their exterior decor. And some of the artists were quite prolific as we kept seeing pieces from the same artist in different parts of the city.
Next, we stopped at a nearby coffee shop for some flat whites before walking to our next destination, the Shot Tower. On the way there, we walked through the Block Arcade, a shopping mall built in the late 1800s featuring Victorian Era decor:
Not only was it pretty to see, it also served as a shortcut to go through the block to continue on to the tower. So the Shot Tower is over 150 feet tall because it was where they used to make lead shots to put into shot guns. The process of making the shots involved pouring tiny drops of liquid metal from such a height that it would harden by the time it made it to the ground. With that in mind, we didn’t think we’d have a hard time finding the shot tower, but we were very wrong. Google Maps kept telling us to go inside the block, away from the street and into a mall. This seemed very strange, but it turns out, the entire Shot Tower is in a mall surrounded by various chain stores. It’s very odd…
And even weirder is that the Shot Tower Museum is in an actual clothing store. We walked inside and asked where the museum was, and the sales person pointed us to the back of the store to a entrance. It’s a very small museum (about two rooms), and you can’t even go up the tower, so I wouldn’t suggest going inside unless you really want to learn about why the Shot Tower exists and how shots are made.
A short walk from the Shot Tower is the State Library of Victoria, known for being one of the busiest public libraries in Australia and also for the iconic six-story dome in the center. We weren’t the only ones with the idea to take a look at the library because it was very busy with tourists—far outnumbering those who were studying or reading. When we made it to the dome, we were impressed by the size of the space and the beauty of the architecture and the shelves of books and rows of desks.
You can go up to the top floor, but the only way to go from the main floor to the second floor was by elevator. Due to the high number of tourists, this created a choke point of people trying to cram into the limited number of elevators both going up and going down. But you do get a great view of the dome from above, so the wait was worth it.
In an adjoining room is a long rectangular reading room with beautiful vaulted ceilings with windows allowing the natural light to flood in:
Next, we walked over to Queen Victoria Market, a large Victorian-era market that still operates to this day. It currently houses make vendors selling various items from food and produce, cheese, crafts and art. The hustle and bustle of the market was a bit overwhelming at first, but we eventually embraced the chaos and found a chocolate store to get some hot chocolate and a pastry:
We were so busy trying to navigate the market that we didn’t really stop to take many photos, but here are a few:
I don’t think the photos really capture the size of the crowd, and combined with the heat, we decided we were done with the market fairly quickly.
Our next destination was Melbourne Pride, which we didn’t even know about until we were in a store and saw a flyer for it. It wasn’t particularly close to Queen Victoria Market, so we planned on catching the tram over there, but when we boarded, we saw notices saying that the tram’s last stop was much earlier than we expected because of the Pride festival. So we actually only went like three stops (instead of like 10) and walked a bit to get there.
We could hear the music and the jovial sounds of people celebrating pride from afar, and soon, we saw pride flags everywhere! It was amazing to see so many people out having fun and looking glamorous. I even got myself a pride fan, mainly because I was actually quite hot and needed something to cool me down. There were also a bunch of vendors with amazing items and art for sale:
We would have stayed longer, but the heat was getting to us, so we grabbed an Uber to take us to the Australian Center for Contemporary Art. Nick actually noticed the architecture of the building on the drive to our hotel from the airport, so he decided to look it up, and that’s basically how we discovered it. Entry is free, and the gallery is fairly small, but the current exhibit detailing nature and social inequality through media was still impactful.
After a brief stop at the hotel to cool down a bit, we quickly walked over to ACMI (Australian Center for the Moving Image) before they closed. They have many free exhibits, but we paid to access the exhibit about cyberpunk and futurism in media. We needed to rush through the exhibit before it closed, so we didn’t take too many photos:
It was fun to see how this genre has been represented throughout the decades in film, TV, and music.
Upstairs, we saw an exhibit about the video game Untitled Goose Game, which Nick played and loved, and even bought a hat at Melbourne Pride with the goose on it If you haven’t played it, you’re basically a goose terrorizing the residents of a quaint British village. We didn’t realize that the developers of the game, House House, is based in Australia:
There’s one large, main exhibit that we had to race through due to time constraints, but we would have definitely spent more time if we could.
Dinner wasn’t for a few more hours, so we walked over to the Melbourne Skydeck, a viewing platform on the 88th floor offering 360° views of Melbourne. The skyscraper it’s located in was the tallest building in Australia, but recently lost that title to another tower a couple of blocks away.
After a quick ride up the elevator, we were on the observation deck. There were some thunderstorms in the distance, but for the most part, we had some great views of the city:
There’s also a bar up there, so we enjoyed some mocktails and fries while overlooking Melbourne and the Yarra river:
Dinner was at Cumulus, where we were seated at the bar, so we had a great view of the chefs working in the kitchen. After looking at the menu, we were interested in the tasting menu, but weren’t really in the mood for a porterhouse as the main dish. We asked if we could substitute it for the duck, and the chef agreed, so tasting menu it was!
We started with wagyu carpaccio, followed by squash and fish, and finally the main course of duck with a side of potatoes and salad:
The dessert was a wonderful chocolate cremeaux with earl gray cream, but we forgot to take a photo of it…
It was a wonderful way to conclude a very busy and fun-filled first day in Melbourne!
Day 3
Our first activity for today was to visit MetArtworld, the world’s largest indoor collection of metal art. The moment you walk through the entrance, you’re already greeted by many large scale metal pieces, including cars and bikes. We were told that we can touch all the art, and sit on the bikes if we wanted to, so we did:
Our ticket also included access to a somewhat interactive art exhibit, which started with going through a mirror maze. The path took us through various small rooms with small scale art or lights. Basically a much less impressive TeamLab experience:
Our ticket allowed us to stay for only two hours, but even with walking slowly through everything, we finished well before our time was up. Still, we enjoyed seeing these pieces up close and would recommend it if you have extra time in Melbourne and want something quirky to do.
After a short walk to the nearest tram station, we rode the tram back to the Central Business District to get some coffee. We found this sleek coffee shop, Code Black, and ordered some pastries and drinks.
They had an innovative menu of coffee drinks, so I tried their Velvet Morning, which was a little similar to a Vietnamese egg coffee. We also noticed that they had a drink called an Ex-Wife Latte, and we asked what that was, and it’s a latte using their coffee beans called Ex-Wife. We’re not really sure why they named it that, but it was very amusing:
Yesterday, while visiting ACMI, we also wanted to visit the nearby Ian Potter gallery, but we ran out of time (they both close at 5pm), so we decided to go there today. Like ACMI, entry is free for most of the exhibits, which mainly focused on Australian art throughout the centuries. The architecture of the building was cool, with sleek angled concrete walls and glass. There was also a room of artworks donated to the museum from a donor who passed away. Nick was amused by the random art this person collected, and how the walls of the room were plastered with pieces that had no coherent theme to them:
We took a break during the middle of the day to relax, but we had reservations for dinner at Lee Ho Fook, a contemporary Chinese restaurant. We knew the entrance was near AC/DC Lane, which we visited a day earlier, but it took me a minute to find the actual front door. Nick spotted a small glass door with the logo on it, so we walked in and up the stairs where the actual restaurant was located.
The sleek interior is such a stark contrast to the gritty street art that surrounds the area outside. They offered Peking Duck, which appears to be a signature dish for them, but we weren’t in the mood, so instead, we opted for their harvest salad, pork buns, crispy eggplant, prawn noodles and fried rice:
The salad was crazy, and we even ordered the smaller size. We were instructed to stir it all together, which was hard to do because it looked so pretty. The rest of the dishes were also quite good, but I think I liked the salad the most.
And with that, we headed back to the hotel to pack up a bit because tomorrow, we’re off to Uluru!