Day 10 – A Tourist in Melbourne
The last time I came to Melbourne, I went to the city 1.5 –
2 days of it, taking the train from my Aunt’s place the requisite 20-30 minutes
down to the various stops within the Melbourne CBD Loop. That said, I didn’t
really internalize everything I saw, aside from remembering some of the names
of the places, and that it had a weirdly, indescribably beautiful skyline. The
skyline fact remains true, and I’ll get back to that in a bit. The sites also I
found to be quite nice, or at minimum a way to easily spend a couple parts of
days.
The first day was locally Friday, with both my cousins
working from home. I decided to do my work of getting up earlier than I normally
would, and taking the train down to Melbourne proper, my first stop being the
Arts District area, which is right at the heart of the city. I’m an Art Museum
guy, and far more so than I was thirteen years back. I went to the National
Gallery of Victoria (NGV) in 2013, but as stated earlier, it is one of those
places I don’t really remember visiting. So much so that I forgot that there
are two NGVs in Melbourne, the bigger/more notable of the two featuring International
(e.g. non-Australian) art, and the other featuring just Australian art. I
wanted to see the Australian one, but walked past it to the other one.
Luckily the entrance to either is free (there are special exhibits that are paid), so I didn’t waste any money. Better yet, I got a really nice walk back to Federation Square (of which the NGV-A hugs a corner), which I definitely do remember from my last trip. Those little hits of nostalgia are quite nice. Anyway, the NGV-A despite being the smaller museum of the two, is still quite big and well laid out. There’s alternating areas of art made by Indigenous Australians, and art made by Settler Australians (not sure what to call them). Both are great. Interspersed in the museum are gorgeous views of Melbourne CBD and the Yarra River as well. On the whole, the NGV-A is a great time to spend say 45 minutes.
From there I headed north to grab both lunch and then a trip to the Melbourne Museum (basically their natural history museum). Lunch was at a Malaysian spot called Blue Chillies. Melbourne is notable for its panoply of Asian cuisine, much of it providing you an endless selection. Malaysian is definitely less plentiful than Thai or Vietnamese, but that is true back home and Blue Chillies seemed to have very good reviews. It also had some great food. I got a duck rendang bao starter, which was every bit as good as those combinations of words would indicate. For the main, I got a lunch special of beef rendang with roti - a weirdly great combination of the meat of my favorite Malaysian dish and the Roti part of my second (roti canai). The rendang wasn't as fatty and chewy (in a good way) as say Nyonya in New York, but pretty damn close. Overall Blue Chillies was a true hit.
The Melbourne Museum served three purposes, all of which paid off. First was seeing a part of Melbourne I hadn't before last time, a more rustic, but still quite green, northern area. Second, was getting a good download on the history of the settlement of Melbourne (and through that, Australia itself in many ways), which the museum did well over a couple exhibits. And lastly, was seeing Australian Dinasaurs, which the museum did fantastically. I've for a while now been on a minor paleontology kick, and seeing a dinasaur museum in a completely different part of world was a thrill. Even in the Cretaceous, Australia was so disconnected from North America that the famous dinausaurs any American is used to is not present. Instead are a bunch of slightly off, weird ones, but it all added up to something excellent.
That ended my tourism part of the day, with teh next stop being meeting my cousin Gavan who finished work early. We met in the Richmond area, one of the buzzing life areas of Melbourne, but probably the more Bohemian of them, for drinks on a rooftop. This was before we were to meet the rest of the family for dinner in the same neighborhood. We had a couple beers at a lovely rooftop, snagging a tabble from 5-6:30 before the real evening rush wandered in. The views of night-time descending upon Melbourne's lovely skyline were just brilliant. To be honest, I'm not sure what specifically does it for me about Melbourne's skyline. It's just such a great combination of different styles of buildings, with so many around the same height and few skyscrapers drowning everything out. To me it is the best skyline for a city not known for its skyline.
Dinner was at Ho Chi Mama, an Asian Fusion sharing plates spot where we tried a little bit of everything, from baos to curries to lamb shank to much more, nearly all of it very good. I'm always a bit skeptical of places like this whose menu cut across so many different types of cuisines, but they tunred out to be really good. It also provided a good amount of sustenance that carried ourselves over for the rest of the night.
Gavan and I checked out four spots after that in Melbourne Central (e.g. the CBD and adjacent areas). They ranged from somewhat disappointing (a fairly empty rooftop of a boutique hotel), to plain very good (another rooftop of a more pub-style place that was packed with after-work-extending-into-night crowd (a personal favorite type of place), to just class (a martini/gin heavy cocktail spot) to pure fun (a side of the road club). Other than the first rooftop, the others I would all fully recommend. Especially Apollo Inn (the cocktail spot) which was just great - the martini's served so chilled, so pure. The ambience great as well. Ending the night at Pulp also was quite a scene - they played a lot of 90/00s hip hop (perfect for both of us, it seemed), with the right level of noise, cheap drinks, people and fog. It was a hazy, fun way to end a great day in Melbourne.
