Neither Here Nor There: Melbourne

I had been really looking forward to our trip to Melbourne- I had heard great things about the city, and we had lots of fun things planned. Also, it seemed like just about just about everyone had already fled (yes, fled) Gladstone for the holidays, so I felt like it was finally our turn!

Side note- I just realized something shocking. I have not heard a nickname, abbreviation, or other modification of the name Melbourne. As Aussies seem to abbreviate just about everything, including city names, this almost seems strange to me. You have Brissy (Brisbane), Tassy (Tasmania), Rocky (Rockhampton), etc., but then just plain old Melbourne. I almost find it a relief! Well, I guess maybe the fact that they pronounce it "Mel-BIN," maybe counts as an almost abbreviation. And that of course makes me want to be defiant and pronounce it as "Mel BORN" even more forcefully, but that's a story for another day.

At any rate... where was I? Oh yes, fleeing GladSTONE (not Glad-stin). :-)

We arrived in Melbourne on the Sunday evening before NYE. All we really had time for was to check into our hotel and wander around to find some dinner. Luckily, we wandered right into the Greek Precinct, where we indulged in copious amounts of wine, gyros, and hummus. Look at the goofy smile on my face- can you tell we are "good restaurant deprived" in our town?

The next day (NYE), we had planned to spend exploring the city. We started out at Federation Square, which is kind of the hub of most of the goings on in the city. Several of Melbourne's museums surround this area, there are tons of restaurants, and lots of outdoor spaces for people to just hang out. The buildings in this area all had really neat architecture. It was fun to see Fed Square this day because they were setting up the area for the big NYE celebration where we would be later that night.

Melbourne is situated on the Yarra River which makes for really pretty views of the city. After lunch, we wandered across the river to the Southgate area. This area had lots of restaurants, shopping, and pretty parks.

This was a cool restaurant/bar underneath the bridge.

One thing that I really liked about Melbourne is that it was really "artsy" and unique. There were a lot of funky, non-chain stores and restaurants just about everywhere.

This is a well-known bar - and one of the oldest in Melbourne.

Cute little book store- my sister would love it!

Melbourne is known for their coffee. This place was recommended to us, and it was great- it was very authentic Italian.

I also loved that the city was divided into the neighborhoods like Chinatown, Little Italy, the Greek Precinct, etc.

Melbourne is also known for their street art. There are tons of narrow allies that are fun to wander through where you can see really amazing street art. We even got to see some street artists in action, which was really neat.

Excuse the bad language...

One of our last stops for the day was the famous Queen Victoria Market. This market is one of the oldest markets in Australia, and it is quite extensive. It was fun to wander around and see all of the meat, cheese, wine, produce, etc. I would love to live in a place someday that had a market like this- it would be so fun to do your grocery shopping in a place like that!

Notice the kangaroo prosciutto (top right)

After a busy day of playing tourist in the city, we went back to our hotel to rest up a little before we went out to celebrate New Year's Eve. We had dinner reservations at an Italian restaurant that sat right on Fed Square. We were able to sit outside, which was nice because then we were able to enjoy the music, show, and people watching as the Melbourne NYE party went on.

Shortly before midnight, we left the restaurant and headed just down the road to the river so we could see the fireworks go off at midnight. It was a great fireworks show- you could see the fireworks being set off from multiple locations in the city and along the river. It was definitely a memorable NYE to be celebrating in another continent AND to be in the very first time zone in the world to enter 2013!