Melbourne, Australia

It would be easy to prefer the city center of Melbourne over that of Sydney, excluding Sydney’s Harbor. This is the conclusion that many of us on the ship came to after our visit.
Melbourne is Australia’s second largest city and the capital of Victoria. According to the locals, Melbourne reigns over Australia culturally and has been dubbed one of the planet’s most livable cities. Great neighborhoods, wide leafy streets and a clean modern transport system make the city of 3.5 million seem smaller. It is also somewhat protected by the large island state of Tasmania some 150 miles to the East. Tasmania is interesting in itself, in that it has animals that live nowhere else but on the Island. An example is the Tasmanian Devil, a fierce fighter that has survived because of a lack of predators. Foxes, Dogs and other predators have been unable to cross the Bass Straight between Australia and Tasmania thereby providing a natural habitat for many endangered species.
We arrived in Melbourne early in the morning and took an organized morning tour. We find these helpful in getting the lay of the land before venturing out on our own. We were able to spend some time walking the Botanical Gardens, but it really needs a full day to explore it entirely. We were lucky to have a beautiful sunny day with temperatures in the high 70’s for our visit. Nearby the Bush fires were still burning but you would not know that in the city.
Next on the tour was the War Memorial. This was originally built to commemorate the 60,000 soldiers lost at Gallipoli in WWI. Of these 60,000 soldiers only 2 were brought back to Australia so the memorial was needed to help families and friends cope with the losses. Each day at 11:00AM the sun shines through a hole in the dome and the light crosses the memorial plaque inside the building. We happened to be there and were able to witness this. A short service is performed at that time which is similar to our taps.
Melbourne is very different from Sydney. The town is laid out in a grid, with little quaint craftsman style houses along the beach areas. The pensioners were given the boot by raising rent and the “DINKS” Double Income No Kids have taken over much of the waterfront area. Dry and brown in places, drought has taken its toll here…for the past 14 years water restrictions have been in place. However, for those of us that did not know the city prior to the drought we hardly noticed the difference.
The Yarrow River splits the city in two and is a great place to walk, with pathways and gardens down both sides of the river. Once the tour was finished we decided to visit the Old City Gaol (Jail). It reminded us of a tour of Alcatraz we had taken years before but was even worse. We should keep in mind that Melbourne was first settled by prisoners brought in from England and Ireland. I guess it was their Guantanamo. Not a bad idea actually.
Our final destination was to the Melbourne Marketplace, which sells everything. I bought another hat (my 3rd of the trip). Our feet told us it was time to head back to the ship for Happy Hour. We met some people from the ship and took the train. A great city and a nice day.