Quick Jump: Federation Square & downtown | Rialto Towers observation deck | Luna Park | Queen Victoria Market tour | Melbourne Cricket Ground
Tuesday the 22nd of February, we drove our rental car to the Melbourne airport, returned it, and caught a bus to St. Kilda, an arty, foodie district south of Melbourne's downtown. We headed toward a slightly upscale hostel called the Olembia, the appeal of which derived only partly from the fact that we had heard there was a resident cat there. In fact, Alex greeted us from his post at the front door next to the oversize flower pot where he took his naps.
The plan was to stay at the Olembia for the first two days while we explored the city, then take a series of two two-day tours out-of-town, and then maybe stay someplace else in Melbourne for our last three days before we caught a flight back to Sydney. After checking in, however, we agreed that the quality of the linens, the friendliness of Alex the cat, and the primeness of the location at the Olembia were such that we might as well just stay there all the nights we were in Melbourne. So we did, which saved us the trouble of having to find a place to store our luggage while we were on the tour-- the hostel had luggage storage facilities.
That first afternoon, we walked around St. Kilda, checking out the beach with its spectacular views of the ocean and shipping vessels, the restaurants on Fitzroy Street, and the legendary "cake shops" on Acland Street. (Of course, we had to sample them.)
The next day we took one of Melbourne's famous trams into the city proper to have ourselves a look around. 
Though neither all-that-tall nor all-that-spectacular, the spire atop the Arts Centre (right) is a pretty distinctive landmark downtown.
Nearby the Arts Centre stands the even more distinctive landmark, Federation Square. Federation Square consists of an open, tiled pedestrian area surrounded by a number of buildings that share the funky face of the one pictured here. According to the Federation Square website (yes, it has its own website), Federation Square "brings together a creative mix of attractions, including galleries, cinemas, restaurants, cafes, bars, two dedicated function centres, festivals, events and public open spaces embraced by some of the most stunning architecture in the world."
It also has its own webcam, which perhaps falls under the category "creative mix of attractions." Obviously, we were amused enough by this attraction to try to capture the image. (We are in this picture of the webcam image, by the way: Chad in red and D in orange holding up the camera.)
After all that fun with the webcam, we took a rest by hopping on the free vintage "City Circle" tram around the downtown area. Trams, by the way, are the public transport of choice in Melbourne, with tracks and overhead wires criss-crossing all the CBD (Central Business District). Our guide book told us that the ubiquitousness of trams in Melbourne had even led to special traffic laws only employed in the city, like the mysterious "fish hook" left turns that we never quite understood.
In fact, Melbourne at street level was starting to get a little overwhelming, so we walked over to the Rialto Towers and took the elevator up to the observation deck on the 55th level. Not quite the Sears Tower, but respectable enough-- Rialto Towers is the tallest office building in the Southern hemisphere.
From the observation deck, we could see most of greater Melbourne, plus get a more comprehensive view of some of the huge buildings that looked so different from the ground. To get you oriented in the panorama above,
the Yarra river (visible only in the very lower right) roughly marks the southern edge of the CBD. Federation Square would be found outside the left lower edge of this picture (under the cluster of buildings going up), and St. Kilda is sandwiched in between the ocean and the small, T-shaped, inland lake just left of center in the distance.
Around to the west of the Towers, we had a good view of the Telstra dome (Telstra being a communications company that seems to own a large sports facility in very large city in Australia), and the Spencer St. train station, undergoing huge renovations that, as far as well could tell, will make the top of it look very similar to the front of the buildings in Federation Square. The renovations are scheduled to be completed in time for the Commonwealth Games of 2006, which Melbourne is very excited to be hosting. (The station is the shiny low building in the foreground of the photo to the right; the Telstra dome is above it and to the right and doesn't look like a dome in this picture because the retractable roof is open.)
Of course, after spending all that time looking down from above, D wanted to make sure we remembered to look up from below. The sunlight and haze through the glass atrium below combined to make it look like the Rialto Towers were so tall that they simply disappeared into the heavens above (left), but they actually didn't.
After the towers, we were pretty much ready to find dinner and head up to the Queen Victoria "Night Market," only held on Wednesday nights during the summer. On the way there, we were surprised to hear a man on the street say quite loudly: "Wayne County Pennsylvania?" After a double take (Chad's parents own a farmhouse in the very rural Wayne County Pennsylvania), we slowly realized that Chad was wearing his "Wayne County Woodsmen's Competition" T-shirt from the county fair and that this strange man was talking to him. We chatted a bit, and the guy confessed that he had never been to Wayne County, Pennsylvania, he just couldn't think of any other Wayne County that would have a woodsmen's competition. (Chad often gets confused looks when he wears this shirt at the University of Michigan, because Wayne County Michigan consists mostly of the city of Detroit.) Turns out, the guy was an American on an "international mission" for Jews for Jesus, so we got roped into listening to his spiel and had a difficult time extracting ourselves.
After this introduction to the city of Melbourne, we took the next four days to travel out into the surrounding countryside a bit. Between our two trips, we had a short Friday evening in St. Kilda to recover from one trip and prepare for the next. So, of course, we went out.
Where we went was the tiny funpark in St. Kilda named Luna Park, after the one at Coney Island. Our trip to Luna Park had a single, solitary purpose: to ride on the Great Scenic Railway, an ancient wooden roller coaster that ran along the top of the park walls, all around the outside border of the park. The ride looked ancient, and a sign outside told us that it was-- built in 1913, it is the oldest wooden roller coaster still in operation. We had to go. So, we went through the funhouse mouth entryway (above left), paid our AUS$7 (per person) for a single ride, and queued up to ride the ride, a piece of which is shown above on the right.
Now we can say that we've ridden on the oldest operating roller coaster in the world-- and having said that, we both agree that we have no real desire to do it again. It was bumpy, not very fast, not very high, and the seats were tiny without much knee room. Curiously, as we pulled out of the station, the attendant was standing on the train between two cars right in front of us. We kept waiting for him to jump off, but he rode the whole ride like that, unbelted and standing. Evidently, in addition to being the oldest operating coaster, it is also the only one that still uses live brakemen on the train. How very bizarre.
A few days later, trips out of Melbourne completed, we took Monday to recover and explore Brunswick Street in Fitzroy, another arty district of Melbourne. Tuesday we had set aside to take the much-publicized "Foodie's Dream Tour" of the Queen Victoria Market, though we were hoping that the day market was better than the night market we had been to the week before. We should not have worried.
We also should not have worried that the AUS$20 per person to take the tour might be a waste of money. The tour included tastings of fresh produce, bread, hand-made dips, sausages and shaved meats, wine, and cheeses, plus lessons on how to shop at a market, what makes particular vendors different from others, and how to buy fresh seafood.
We also learned about the history of the Queen Victoria Market and about the day-to-day operation of a fresh-food market. There were so many vendors that they all tried to distinguish themselves from the others, advertising the fact that they were organic (hence the very funny chicken signs, left), or Eastern European, or third- or fourth-generation family-owned businesses.
After the tour was complete, we continued to shop the market on our own, armed with new "insider" information and anxious to try it out. A few hours later, we had stuffed ourselves with bread, pesto, cheese, and coffee and bought raspberry vinegar and some spice blends to take home with us, vowing to find a fresh-food market in Sydney and make it a regular part of our shopping.
So, delightfully full and slightly sleepy, we decided to finish our last day in Melbourne by touring the "MCG," or Melbourne Cricket Ground.
Melbourne is infamous in Australia and around the world for being full of sporting fanatics, with its citizens often waxing passionate over sporting matches not just of the home teams but of games that they don't even play in Australia. Unfortunately, our schedule in Melbourne conspired against us such that we were unable to attend an actual game (of any kind) in the MCG, so we figured a tour was the next best thing.
Though it is called the Melbourne Cricket Ground, cricket is by no means the only sport played there. "Aussie Rules" (pronounced "ozzie rules"), a type of football that is neither soccer nor American football, is also played at the MCG, as well as rugby and a handful of other sports as the occasion arises. The cricket season includes both test cricket matches, which are multi-day events that only certain countries are allowed to play in (the US is not one of the permitted countries), as well as "one-day" matches, which have slightly different rules and for which there are much less strict eligibility requirements. During sporting festivals such as the Commonwealth Games in 2006, the MCG will also be used for track and field events.
Our tour of the MCG gave us an opportunity to walk through the stands, learn the history of the grounds and a little about the sports played there, and actually stand on the "sacred sod." Although we still couldn't give you a good explanation of what Aussie rules football actually is, or how cricket matches actually work, we're slowly gaining some semblance of comprehension on these topics. Sydney has an international cricket ground as well, so maybe we'll get to see a match in person someday and figure it all out-- although, our British and Australian friends tell us that the point of watching a cricket match is to get completely "pissed" (their word for "drunk") and so maybe we won't learn anything after all...
View of the Melbourne skyline from the MCG.
All in all, it was clear that Melbourne is a very different city from Sydney, with a layout and a "flavor" all its own. In a sense, it's kind of like trying to compare Chicago to New York-- although they are both undeniably American cities, each has been shaped by regional and cultural forces that are distinctly different from those that have shaped the other. Melbourne is much more like New York than Sydney is, so it was not really a surprise that Chad felt much more affection for Melbourne than he does for Sydney. Then again, both D and Chad had visited Sydney before living there, while Melbourne was a new city for them both. Perhaps the newness of the city and the tourist approach that we took to it influenced our impressions much more than either of us realized. Obviously, we'll just have to go back to find out if that's the case!