Melbourne over the Queen’s Birthday!

Being able to have a few days off here and there is great… in this case as I had six days off we all decided to do our first Melbourne trip since our re-location. The great part of living in the Albury area is that Melbourne is only a short car ride away… so no more flights required.

Our our way to Melbourne we have a short stop over in Glenrowan. This is a very small town where the murderer Ned Kelly made his last stand and was shot and captured by police. The town had a large statue of Ned Kelly and when Xander saw this he said “Look Daddy, he has a bucket over his head, that’s silly”. Yes, how very silly indeed! Anyway, we eventually made in down to Melbourne and the first thing that struck us was the large highways and the traffic… it’s funny how quickly you get used to living in a small town!

We met up with Kate and Adam that night for a few drinks and catch up and it was great to see the kids playing together again!

The next morning Suz and I in company with Kate and the kids headed off to Melbourne Zoo. Xander loved seeing all the big animals such as the Elephants and the Orangutans and Eloise was fascinated by the butterflies inside the “Butterly House”. We were a bit disappointed over the fact that we didn’t really get to see the Hippos though but I guess she was on maternity leave as she had just given birth… a well, there is always next time. We spent a few hours inside the Zoo before we (and the kids) decided that it was enough for one day. The zoo is really great and we will happily come back to it.

Coming back to Adam and Kate’s house we were treated to a great Spit-Roasted Lamb, cooked slowly over charcoals. It was great and made me realised that I’ve been missing having a charcoal BBQ at home which I have to rectify very soon…. (I have my eyes on a spit roaster already….)

The next morning we met up with Paul and Lynda at their house in Blackburn for lunch. On our way there we made a quick stop at Box Hill in order to purchase a few items which we were bringing with us. Box Hill is basically Melbourne’s answer to Hurstville…. it’s so Asian that Chinatown has nothing on it…. it seemed to have some great places for Asian groceries and restaurants and if we didn’t already have plans for lunch we would happily made a stop-over here!

That night we spent in a hotel located along Little Bourke Street, near Chinatown, close to the centre of Melbourne. As we were walking, trying to determine where to have our dinner, Suz happened to walk past H&M and had to do a quick stop which was good as we found some great clothes for Xander and Eloise. After feasting on some tasty dumplings (where we ordered way to many) we found a small French Creperie (it was even run by two French cooks) on the main road and got Xander a very tasty Nutella Crepe before we headed back to our hotel.

Out our last day in Melbourne (and after having a great breakfast at our hotel) we spent some time strolling around the CBD and enjoyed some great coffee while doing some people watching of the footy fans (they really do love their AFL here) who were gathering in Federation Square prior to the match.

We decided to travel to St Kilda to visit Luna Park and treat Xander to his first amusement park visit. Funnily though, as soon as we entered the park Xander wasn’t interested in any of the rides and all he wanted to do was to play with the sideshow games and running around in the gift shop looking at all the show bags…. ah well, we tried 😉

For lunch we headed over to Richmond and Pho Hung Vuong 2 for a Pho Bo as we had heard that it was one of the better ones in Melbourne…. and it didn’t disappoint, it was just as good (if not better) than many others that we’ve had before (However the one I had in Hanoi is still the best one yet…. but that could also be because of the fact that we were in Hanoi). Before we started our journey back home we decided that we had to stop for a gelato from Gelato Messina and yes, it was still as good as ever!

Our time in Melbourne was great and it was great to catch up with a few friends again who we haven’t seen in a while. It was also great to be able to eat some great food which we don’t have here in Albury. And although we had originally planned to stop at many other places for food it was just too hard to fit it all in (literally) as we were too full from the other places 😉

Ah well, I guess this means that we have to return to Melbourne soon again…. good thing it’s only a short car ride away!