Melting pot Melbourne: the city of hook turns

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  Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
Friday, November 27, 2009

The last 3 days we spent in Melbourne, an interesting city of contrasts: Nice avenues with trees and beautiful historical buildings are regularly crossed by tiny, shabby back alleys. You can find anything here: Chinatown with hundrets of china- and thairestaurants, the greek quarter, the colourful and almost trashy bohemian quarter Fitzroy with its alternative, artistic and trendy elements, and yeah, finally the worlds fifth ugliest building, the Federation Square, Melbournes meeting place with cultural and culinaric experiences. Like in Sydney, we found a lot of beautiful historical buildings just between the skyskrapers. Even the weather's a contrast, blue sky and burning sun quickly changed to thunderstorms with heavy rain showers and vice versa.

The hotel, the Alto hotel on Bourke Street, is perfecly located in the city center. With a charming old outside front, this small and quite personal hotel with friendly staff provides newly renovated fresh appartements and proudly calles itself a green "carbonneutral hotel" (climate change is a hot issue in Australia as we could see on media every day..)

If you ever get to Melbourne, a beer at Mrs Parma's is a must

Alto Hotel

. Here you get Victorian brewed beer, and as an astonishing coincidence the beer I tasted has its historical roots in Austria. We can also recommend a lunch at Movida's Tapas Bar (excellent!), a snack at Grill'd in Carlton (Burgers "made with love") or dinner at Brisq restaurant (good quality, good service). We tried several times to get a table at obviously popular Mitre's Tavern, which unfortunately always was overcrowded (but anyway, thanks for the tip, Daz!)

On wednesday we took the Yarra Valley Winery tour, where a friendly guide took us to Yarra Valleys best wine yards. We got a taste of more than 20 different white, red, sparkling and rosewines (which led to a slight afternoon knock-out), and even a really tasty lunch was included in that trip.

As a highlight we have been to Melbourne Museum, which is called as the biggest and most innovative museum of the southern hemisphere. Here we learned a lot about the dark and bright sides of Melbournes early history and got an excellent introduction to Australian Indigenous cultures, walked through the rain forest and enjoyed the exhibition on evolution, the human body and dinosaurs.

Have you ever heared the term "hook turn"? This is a Melbourne-specific traffic feature.. In order to make a right turn (which in lefthand traffic is equivalent to a left turn in Europe) you have to wait on the left side of the road on the crossing until the traffic light turns to red. First then you may finalize your right turn..

We really enjoyed being here. Tonight we are going to board the plane to Auckland, New Zealand.

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Federation Square	St. Paul's cathedral	back alley	Parliament building
Almdudler and Estragon mustard	Yarra Valley	Winery	Thats what they do with unattended children..
Map of Australia	Aboriginal Art	Melbournes early history	Fitzroy
Frontyard	Hook turn	Hook turn

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