Sunday, August 9, 2015

Melbourne Adventure! Day One

Around two weeks ago, I visited Melbourne for the first time. Primarily to view the "David Bowie Is" exhibition taking place at ACMI. "David Bowie Is" is an exhibition which took place at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, it proved so popular that it's touring the world. I promised myself that if it came to Australia I would go to see it. So I bought a ticket last year when the exhibition was announced :)

I really love aeroplanes, I think it's fantastic that travel has changed so much over 100 years. It's crazy to think how quickly we can reach places now, and how not long ago we used to have horse travel only!
On the aeroplane, I got two seats by myself, which is always appreciated.

I arrived in Melbourne late in the evening, and I was lucky to have a friend come pick me up from the airport and take me to my hostel. I stayed at The Nunnery, which is a lovely hostel situated about a 30min walk from the city.

My room was an 8 bed female only dorm room. I personally don't like sharing with people, but when traveling I'm always on a budget. The hostel also offers free breakfast, which is nice. I woke up nice and early the next morning, and started my walk into Melbourne.

Here's the fireplace in the common room of the hostel. Really nice on a cold winters day.

I passed some really nice architecture on the way.

Close up of the statues.

I found Flinders Street Station, where I was meeting a coworker. She really loves Bowie too, so when she hear I was going to see the exhibition we tried to plan some sightseeing together. She also brought her young son and friend Andrew, both who I've met before.

My coworker had booked high tea for us at a new place called Fancy Nance. We took a tram there, which was fun.

Walking past some pretty storefronts.

Fancy Nance was hidden down an alleyway.

We went with the "I'm So Fancy" option.

Because we booked an early time the place was deserted.

What's high tea without tea? I had my favourite, English Breakfast (I'm not very adventurous in my tea). Sadly, the pots of tea did not have free refills.

First course!

They had a lot of strange fancy foods. I enjoyed all of it, apart from the item on the left. This was a rice dessert with popcorn.

Macaron

Second course, jam and scones. My favourite!
One of the jams was capsicum (bell peppers for you Americans) with a cream cheese spread.
The thing in the middle is an olive pastry with smoked cheese. It was really, really smoked. All your could taste was smoke. I still ate it :)


Third course, savoury. The item on the right was a chicken sandwich with deep fried buns, YUM!

After morning tea/lunch we were stuffed! We went for a little walk, and found a produce market.
We found this cool robot.

We had dinner booked for the evening at TGI Fridays (which is not in Perth). My coworker went back to where she was staying and I decided to stay in the city because there was no point going back to my hostel.
So, I did what I always do when I'm in the city centre with time to kill. I went to the library.

Here is the State Library of Victoria's reading room.
I brought my kindle with me, so I spent a few hours reading here till it was time for dinner

Domed ceiling.

The front of the State Library.

At TGI Fridays I had a fajita tower!! It was fantastic! It came out smoking from the meat in the middle dish.

For dessert I had a fudge brownie thing. It was delicious!

After stuffing myself with food the whole day, I walked back to my hostel and went to bed.

Next day: Bowie exhibition!!

3 comments:

linnea-maria said...

Melbourne looks fantastic! So many lovely buildings. That fancy Nance high tea looks very exotic in my Swedish taste, but would absolutely be interesting.

Unknown said...

Wow.... yumm, I just got hungry. Looking forward to your Bowie exhibition review :-)

Doctor Z said...

Ooooo, what a pretty city! And the mural on the wall in Fancy Nance is fantastic! :) Gothic Flamingo would love them.

I wonder if the Bowie exhibit is coming to NYC? hmmm ...