Last day in Melbourne

May 23

Our last day in Melbourne was sunny, cool and lovely. We finally road the City Circle Tram, a free tram with a route around the city center every 15 minutes. Great way to get around and a recorded voice tells you about sights, shops and things to do around each stop.
We rode it to the Fitzroy Gardens for a look at Captain Cook's cottage, brought over to Melbourne in pieces and reconstructed.

This park is over 150 years old and the huge lanes of trees make that evident. The small conservatory was delightful with hanging plants and lush bromeliads, impatiens and begonias.

We were intrigued by the signpost  directing us to the "Fairy Tree and Model Tudor Village". Once we found them, we were not so impressed.

We did enjoy tea time at the garden cafe before getting back on the tram to the Docklands in search of the Polly Woodside.  Polly was a coal hauling tall ship built in 1885, we decided not to go aboard. Instead we enjoyed our picnic lunch on the steps of the Melbourne Convention Center there by the docks.

The Melbourne Convention Center is the building to the right.

Back on the tram for the ride back to the hotel. Bob went upstairs to rest while I finished my souvenir shopping.

We wanted a new dining experience and were lead to Hardware Lane, a small cobblestone lane not far from our hotel.

This lane had no cars, outdoor dinning and hawkers trying to lure you into their restaurants. We chose one, and with some disappointment on the part of our waiter ordered the kangaroo. Luckily we started with a Moroccan beef salad that was excellent; baby salad greens dressed lightly with cucumbers, tomatoes, roasted red peppers , slivered red onions and thin slices of savory beef.  The whole main course was less than satisfactory, the roo meat was undercooked, the vegetables and mashed sweet potatoes not hot enough, oh well. We did end the meal with a delightful "hot chocolate pudding with ice cream" what we know as a molten lava cake. I plan to experiment with this dessert soon :-)

Melbourne Bird List
Pacific Black Duck
Pied Cormorant
Australian Wood Duck
Scaly Breasted Lorikeet
Spotted Turtle-Dove
Willy Wagtail
Crescent Honeyeater
Eastern Spinebill
Magpie Lark
Grey Butcherbird

May 24
Our wake-up call came at 5 AM, we dressed and headed to the Queen Victoria Market to get sandwiches for the long trip home. Our shuttle arrived early and we were waiting for our plane with two hours to spare. I was once again amazed that a large airport like Melbourne did not have free wifi, in fact it was the most expensive I had seen at $4.00 for 10 minutes. The time went by quickly though and soon we were boarding our two story "airbus", more like a cruise ship, HUGE !!  We spent our 13 plus hours watching countless movies and TV and listening to the jovial Aussies behind us get louder the more they drank. The Qantas staff kept us fed and hydrated.
Getting all the way home involved LAX,  a bus ride over highway 17 and two taxis.
Our yard had burgeoned forth while we were gone, I picked a handful of blueberries and raspberries !! Max and Maggie were very glad to see us. Home sweet home !!

Melbourne gardens and museum.

May 21

We began the morning listening to the movie Bob took of the kookaburra serenade on our last day in Tassie. Fortified with muesli and yogurt  we set out to explore the Royal Melbourne Botanical Gardens. 
We walked along the Yarra River where we saw rowing clubs and sculls out for a morning row.

We must have walked almost every track in that park and spent a lot of time with our binoculars and bird book.

View from Guilfoyle's Volcano.

Inside the greenhouse.

We added some new birds to our list and Bob had fun taking lots of photos of a kookaburra. It was a sunny but cool day so all that walking was a good thing.

We climbed up into the large Shrine of Remembrance, a war memorial that had great views all over the city.

View form the top of the Shrine of Remembrance.

We wove our way back to our hotel with a few stops for more gift shopping. Bob rested while I did more blogging and photo uploading. Our plan for dinner was to find Lygon Street, we had some trouble and ended up walking for about an hour before we found it. It is known for it's Italian restaurants. We picked one at random, Bob had a nice whole soft shell crab sauce over spaghetti and I had an ordinary cannelloni stuffed with spinach and ricotta.

May 22

The weather was cold with a few showers in the morning. We were glad that the Queen Victoria Market was mostly enclosed. We headed over there for a more relaxed perusal of all the food there. Lots of fresh seafood, whole fish, meats of all kinds, amazing cheeses, breads, pastries, deli fare, fruits and vegetables...my kind of heaven as you can imagine.

Bob loved these sandwiches with the eggs on top.

Amazing chocolates.

One giant crab !!

Lots of odd prepared meats.

We took lots of great photos, bought cheeses, pastries, wine, and more raw oysters. Bob tried his first meat pie and loved it. We dropped our purchases back at the hotel and headed out to walk to the Melbourne Museum.
The architecture in this city is so varied, one street will have ornate Victorian buildings and across the street will be something ultra modern. We came across Drummond St. by luck and were enchanted by it's buildings. Shades of New Orleans ??

The Melbourne Museum is a combination of Melbourne history, natural history and Aboriginal heritage. We started with the history of Melbourne, it was a very good combination of displays and text that spotlighted points of historical interest through the decades. Their history is similar to that of California, with gold rushes, mechanization, social issues and economic depressions.
We took a break at the museum cafe for lunch then entered the Forest Gallery, a multistory indoor forest. We got to see a Satin Bower bird, busy at work on his bower, a ground nest he must build to entice the female to mate.

Satin Bower bird in the Forest Gallery of the Melbourne Museum.

We thought we would just spend a short time in the natural history section...their insect exhibit was the best Bob had ever seen. We spent at least an hour looking through the rooms of amazing displays of both, live, dead and models of insects and other arthropods.

We thought we would not spend long in their multi-tiered two story room of mammals, wrong again. While I am not a fan of taxidermied specimens, this room had the most amazing touch screens, large ones with the animals you were seeing right on them. A young girl showed us how to work them. You would touch an animal  and the screen would open a window with the animal's  range and level of endangerment.

Around the room were smaller touch screens on pivots that you could point at an animal, touch and get even more information about habitat, diet, etc...we were in awe. Another hour went by as we enjoyed this very cool technology. It was hard to leave this museum without having seen the rest of their displays. We were saturated and needed to do a bit more souvenir shopping before heading back to the hotel.
We were so glad we had purchased another dozen oysters at the market in the morning. We ate them slowly this time savoring each one. That was our "entree" which is what they call appetizers here in Oz. Bob was too tired to go out again so I slipped out and bought some takeout sushi and seaweed salad to complete our dinner.