Melbourne 2016 Day 1: Hosier Lane, Flinders Street Station & Queen Victoria Summer Night Market
DAY 1: 30 NOV 2016
It's the school holidays yet again!
No longer a student but, as a teacher, I definitely look forward to the holidays
as an avenue to recharge for the new term next year.
We snagged a good exchange rate for the Aussie currency,
so off we went to Melbourne!
We bought a pair of Emirates tickets at S$824 each which is not the best price
you can get as we booked it in August.
You can get it at S$600+ if you book during promotion periods at least 9 months in advance.
We got our Australian e-visa through a travel agent on hardwarezone website.
It's S$7 per visa, but we managed to get ours for free (:
We arrived in Melbourne at 9am and we proceeded to get a data sim card for our stay.
Optus offers a 500MB per day data sim card at AUD$2 per day.
I used the M1 data passport so my mum bought the sim card for 5 days,
which sums up to only AUD$10.
The process was fuss-free as the card was activated on the spot.
After getting the sim card, we proceeded to the SkyBus ticketing counter to purchase our tickets.
A return journey costs AUD$38 and the buses depart every 10 minutes from the airport
and Southern Cross station.
There wasn't much traffic. so we reached Southern Cross station within 25 minutes.
From Southern Cross station, we headed to the SkyBus counter again to request
for a free hotel transfer.
The hotel transfer dropped us right outside the town hall and
we took a quick 3 minutes walk to our hotel, Ibis Styles Melbourne, The Victoria Hotel.
We booked the heritage queen room and the room was spacious for the two of us.
The location was really good too as we were in the free tram zone and we got around
using the trams and trains rather frequently.
We managed to get our room keys even though it was only 11am.
After checking in, we headed straight out for some sight-seeing!
For lunch, we decided to head to a burger place called Huxtaburger.
It was a small outlet with most patrons being office workers since it was during lunch hour.
We ordered the Huxtaburger (AUD$9.90) which had a beef patty
and a Clair (AUD$13.50) which had southern fried chicken topped with coleslaw.
The buns were grilled lightly and the seasonings were on point.
Thereafter, we took a walk to the famous Hosier Lane.
It was packed, not surprisingly.
Love the vibrant colours of the graffiti.
Hosier lane certainly brought some edge to the dull, mundane CBD.
I spotted some lanes in the CBD which were splatted with graffiti too, so do look out for them.
We then paid a quick visit to St Paul's Cathedral located in the vicinity of Hosier Lane,
and crossed the road to get to the federation square and the Melbourne Visitors Centre
for some maps!
By the way, they have tons of brochures available.
If you are interested in visiting the Eureka Skydeck or the aquarium, they have discount
brochures there for you!
 |
| Flinders Street Station |
No longer a student but, as a teacher, I definitely look forward to the holidays
as an avenue to recharge for the new term next year.
We snagged a good exchange rate for the Aussie currency,
so off we went to Melbourne!
We bought a pair of Emirates tickets at S$824 each which is not the best price
you can get as we booked it in August.
You can get it at S$600+ if you book during promotion periods at least 9 months in advance.
We got our Australian e-visa through a travel agent on hardwarezone website.
It's S$7 per visa, but we managed to get ours for free (:
We arrived in Melbourne at 9am and we proceeded to get a data sim card for our stay.
Optus offers a 500MB per day data sim card at AUD$2 per day.
I used the M1 data passport so my mum bought the sim card for 5 days,
which sums up to only AUD$10.
The process was fuss-free as the card was activated on the spot.
After getting the sim card, we proceeded to the SkyBus ticketing counter to purchase our tickets.
A return journey costs AUD$38 and the buses depart every 10 minutes from the airport
and Southern Cross station.
There wasn't much traffic. so we reached Southern Cross station within 25 minutes.
From Southern Cross station, we headed to the SkyBus counter again to request
for a free hotel transfer.
The hotel transfer dropped us right outside the town hall and
we took a quick 3 minutes walk to our hotel, Ibis Styles Melbourne, The Victoria Hotel.
We booked the heritage queen room and the room was spacious for the two of us.
The location was really good too as we were in the free tram zone and we got around
using the trams and trains rather frequently.
We managed to get our room keys even though it was only 11am.
After checking in, we headed straight out for some sight-seeing!
 |
| Melbourne Town Hall |
 |
| Block Arcade |
 |
| Huxtaburger |
It was a small outlet with most patrons being office workers since it was during lunch hour.
We ordered the Huxtaburger (AUD$9.90) which had a beef patty
and a Clair (AUD$13.50) which had southern fried chicken topped with coleslaw.
The buns were grilled lightly and the seasonings were on point.
Thereafter, we took a walk to the famous Hosier Lane.
It was packed, not surprisingly.
Love the vibrant colours of the graffiti.
Hosier lane certainly brought some edge to the dull, mundane CBD.
I spotted some lanes in the CBD which were splatted with graffiti too, so do look out for them.
 |
| St Paul's Cathedral |
and crossed the road to get to the federation square and the Melbourne Visitors Centre
for some maps!
By the way, they have tons of brochures available.
If you are interested in visiting the Eureka Skydeck or the aquarium, they have discount
brochures there for you!
 |
| Flinders Street Railway Station |
I liked the fact that the CBD is laid out really neatly which makes navigation a whole lot easier.
 |
| Degraves Street |
which only happens every Wednesday from 5pm to 11pm.
We took the free city circle tram from Flinders Street and alighted at Queen St/La Trobe St.
If you missed the city circle tram service, you can always take other trams within the
free tram zone to get to the market.
 |
| City Circle Tram, Route 35 |
from food stalls to clothes and toy stalls.
We were there at 6pm and the market was already bustling with crowds.
 |
| Queen Victoria Summer Night Market |
Food stalls were lined in a row and they range from Spanish paella to Greek Souvlaki
to Chinese cuisine.
We settled for Paella (AUD$12) and Souvlaki (AUD$16).
 |
| Seafood Paella |
The Paella stall had 4 different kinds of paella which also included a squid ink version.
We stuck with the traditional seafood paella which was topped with prawns, squid and mussels.
 |
| Greek Souvlaki open platter |
which was drawing a huge crowd.
And obviously we just had to try it.
We ordered an open platter which had beef and pork served with sour cream and pita bread.
The saltiness in the meat and the sour cream really blended well together.
Really glad that we joined the crowd!
We were really full from these two dishes and so we settled for a nice cup of mojito (AUD$8).
There were a few bands playing that night, so we grabbed a seat and enjoyed
the live music in the evening.
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