Photo Friday: Melbourne Sights

Melbourne was the first stop on our recent trip to Australia. What a lovely city it is, and what a great way to start off our vacation. The city itself has a decidedly European feel to it, with lots of parks and green spaces, a gentle but changeable climate and elegant architecture. It was very easy to navigate around there using the city’s tram service. And that’s a good thing since yours truly decided early on that he was going to leave the driving to others on this trip!

#72 Tram in Melbourne (click on any image to enlarge)

Entrance to the Cullen

View from our window at the Cullen

We stayed at the Cullen Hotel, which is in the Prahran district, and conveniently located on the #72 Tram route. It is also right across the street from the Prahran Market, which is a wonderful farmers market chock-full of fruit, veggies, meat, seafood and other goodies. You can bet we had to check it out and make some purchases. We picked up bananas, mango, papaya and passionfruit to go with our breakfast yogurt, and some lovely walnut sourdough bread for toast. Of course I had to have some honey too, the first (but not the last) on our trip.

Outside of Prahran Market building

fruit display in Prahran Market

Goodies from the Prahran Market

We also visited the world-famous Queen Victoria Market. This Melbourne landmark has been open since 1878, and is the largest open air market in the Southern Hemisphere, with 600 vendors (I didn’t count them all myself). We spent several hours there and didn’t even begin to see it all. I let my wife take the photos there so I will share a couple of hers. We took so many photos on this trip that in some places we decided that only one of us need do it.

QVM vegetables

eggplants and peppers

One of the highlights of our stay in Melbourne was our visit to the Royal Botanical Gardens there. I think my favorite spot was the Children’s Garden (imagine that). That was where most of the edible plants were located, plus there were so many neat things for kids to see and do. It’s was impossible to get photos of some of the features because they were crawling with kids – literally. One project I really liked were the Memory Flags hung up by people describing what they liked doing as a child, and how it related to their adult life. I really loved Debra’s entry!

Memory flag display with water mist

All in all, our time in Melbourne was way too brief. We hoped to visit the Australian Garden at the RBG in Cranbourne, which is just about an hour drive from the city. And it would have been fun to take the City Circle tram and tour the city, or visit the National Gallery or the Melbourne Museum. I’d love to go back and visit again some day.

I’ll close with a gallery of some more photos from the RBGM. You can click on the thumbnails for a larger image, then cycle through the photos. My wife has a lovely photo spread about Melbourne herself, with her view of this magnificent city. I’ll be back next week with more photos from Australia. Happy Friday to you all!