I must say that I hadn't expected Melbourne to be such a high-rise kinda place but there were a ton of sky-scrapers in the city including the hotel we were staying in. The reception was on the 80th floor! It was slightly weird, felt like being in an aircraft. I snapped a picture from the reception window (see above) it was one hell of a view! What you can see is the "Marvel Stadium" and the docks behind, the railway station in the foreground is the "Southern Cross Station" (the largest in Melbourne apparently) the thread of water winding its way out to the sea is the Yarra River, more on that in later posts.
On one of the days in Melbourne we took a bicycle tour around the city, it was around 15 km in total with a nice long stop for lunch. We covered a fair bit of ground, mostly flat but with a few hills, fortunately the bikes had "power assist", i.e. a battery and motor that kicked in as you peddled which helped a lot. One of the sights that we passed was the MCG or Melbourne Cricket Ground, a holy place for cricket fans, I snapped a picture from afar (see below) although we did have a little peek in from one of the stands a bit later in the tour.
I was surprised to learn that the stadium holds more than 100,000 people and the locals refer to it as "The G", very impressive, no wonder the Aussies more often than not beat us in the Ashes!
I liked Melbourne, it wasn't as "pretty" as Sydney but I think it had more character, a little rough around the edges but the pubs and restaurants seemed a little more "organic" if you know what I mean. The city is well known for it's love of craft coffee, but it also loves craft beer! We visited quite a few little craft nooks and crannies, I snapped one of my favourites below, "Beermash" in the Collingwood district.
On one of the days in Melbourne we took a little tour of one of my favourite Australian wineries, Yarra Yering, it was only an hour out of the city but the tasting there was fab, more about that in the next post.
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