Australia Adventure Day 9 - Queen Victoria Market

4 February 2018 -

Breakfast at Manchester Press -

The morning was so cold and nice!! I love it.

The trip is free if your route in within the free tram zone! You do not need to tap your card. At first, it seems so weird because it is like we are trying not to pay for our ride. We have not even bought the Myki card yet.

Manchester Press is located in this ulu secluded alley. It does not even look like there is a cafe there, but it must be there because of the MP arrow sign. The ambience of the cafe is nice, and it was filled with people. My colleague recommended me this popular cafe known for its bagels. Come to think of it, I never had a bagel before this trip. 

True enough, the menu features bagel in different forms, how interesting. I had Smoked Salmon (A$16) again! And I told myself that was the last haha. It was getting too much. I am assuming the small green things are the baby capers. They taste like little olives and goes quite well with the smoked salmon and bagel. My bf chose the Maple, Bacon & Banana with blueberry bagel (A$16). Bacon seems so out of place but gosh it was so good! I did not know that saltish sweet stuff can be so weirdly delicious. The warm and slightly sweet blueberry bagel is so well complimented with the mascarpone.

The portions do not look that big, but we were sure real full. Our tummies were happy. 

Walking to Queen Victoria Market - 

I do not know how we managed the walking part. I just followed my walking map & guide. It was not very far from Manchester Press and it was a good walk for digestion. 

There's many things to see at QVM! It is like Bugis street? There are clothes, shoes, toys, essential oils, paintings, souvenirs and so many that I cannot remember already. There are also many food choices there, but we only had a pack of fries. I bought 2 bottles of essential oil at a steal of A$18 only. I bought a set of magic markers too, which I came back to give away to my nieces. I figured I won't be using them and it was just the kid in me that love to buy art stuff. 

The other side features all the food stuff. There is the wet market (theirs is not wet) kind with vegetables and fruits displayed. The ones in the interior of the building were fresh meats, cheese, chocolate, honey, dried goodies and other pastries stuff. My bf bought 2 bottles of Manuka Honey at A$180 ++.  It is a good experience to come here for shopping, even though we did not buy that much.

State Library of Victoria -

We followed the directions of the map and came to the state library. We observed the people playing the big set of chess right outside the building. The atmosphere feels very relaxed as people were just sitting around on the grass, like having a picnic under the sun.

The interior design of the library is beautiful. You see many students studying and it feels weird to just walk around the library like we were window shopping. We visited the library but nope, I did not even pick up a single book hahaha.

Melbourne Central Shopping Centre -

The shopping centre is just right opposite. I did not really shop much except for buying clothes at Temt and Cotton On. I was so hyped up about visiting Temt Australia because I love the outlets in SG (But recently their design seemed to be too flowery, so I don't buy so much anymore.). They actually have bigger sizes in Australia from 14 - 20. This is essentially the problem for me, I could not find my size for the clothes I like. Size 10 is hard to come by, especially for the items on sale. The price is about the same as SG too. And so, the only Temt piece I bought is for my mother.

I went around to search for a Vday gift while my bf sat at the cafe bench entertained by his game, and thinking that I have gone to the toilet. I took a bit too long but I got a cute jelly fish thing that lights up. It is supposed to be a jellyfish that can go underwater in the bathtub. But Singapore HDB where got bathtub lol. My gift shall be used for its decorative purpose or maybe as a cute variation of a bedside lamp.


Dinner at the Food Court -

We decided to settle dinner simply. There are a few stores selling different cuisines - Chinese, Japanese, Western, Korean, Indian & fast food. At 6pm, they were already having offers and packing up because they were closing soon. I went with some Indian food, and the butter chicken is tasty. Unfortunately, my bf chose some Chinese fried rice and noodles, which taste so horrible. Remember Golden Boat Chinese Restaurant? Maybe we are too critical about Chinese food precisely because we are Chinese. And what is Singapore noodles? We have many types of noodles, but none is called Singapore noodles. Yet we see noodles like this advertised as Singapore noodles 😅.

We bought our Myki card at the metro station, and then took the free tram back.

On our way back, we finally found the 1 for 1 Maxibons in the chocolate flavour that my bf has been looking for since our time in Cairns.

Australia Adventure Day 8 - Flying to Melbourne

3 February 2018 -

Breakfast at Bang & Grind -

We had to have breakfast at Bang & Grind because it is my favourite breakfast place in Cairns. I am so hungry now while typing this!

Basically, I ordered the same thing, but with an additional big mushroom (+A$4) - Egg Benedict with Smoked Salmon (A$14.90). My bf knew better not to order pancakes with super sour berry sauce. He ordered the Huevos Rancherios (A$17.90) which includes fried eggs served on sour dough with many other ingredients. The bacon is an add-on at an extra of A$4 too. 

The smoked salmon on the crispy sour dough is amazingly good, especially with the green spinach & hollandaise sauce. The field mushroom is very juicy and yummy. I cannot remember the taste of the other, but my bias opinion is that it must be good :p. A long black (A$5) for me & a mochacinno (A$6) for him to start off our day.

The flight to Melbourne by Virgin Airlines -

We waited for our Sun Palm transfer bus to come and pick us up to the airport. We reached our destination quickly and had ample amount of time. While going through the gantry for checking, I stupidly left my phone in my pocket and had to go back and go through again 😩. I must be sleepy. 

There are quite a number of shops on the inside. If you are hungry, you can grab a bite at the cafe. I was craving for some cold nice sandwich, but I did not see any. 

As it was a 3 hour 20 mins domestic flight, I was not expecting any food. But to our pleasant surprise, there is a yummy set of snacks! The small sandwich bun satisfied my craving a bit. The vegetable crispy puff is served hot and it is so delicious! I think it is curry flavoured.

Similar to SilkAir Studio, Virgin Australia has their own entertainment system app that you can only access in-flight. You can watch movies or read interesting books, but we were so sleepy and napped on the plane instead.

Melbourne, here we are! - 

First thing on my itinerary was to buy the tickets for SkyBus transfer to bring us to Southern Cross Station. The return tickets for one person cost A$36. No worries about booking the tickets in advance, the interval is quite frequent and you may get tickets directly at their booth with ease. Furthermore, our hotel was one of hotels in which free shuttle to & from Southern Cross Station is provided. You may check the website for more information. [To think I wanted to walk to the hotel or take the metro with our luggages.] At the station, we had to inform the staff which hotel we were going and then wait for the hotel pick up shuttle. The drivers will come later and shout out the hotel names for you to follow them.

There is free Wi-fi on SkyBus by the way!

Hotel Windsor -

There were a few others with us who were heading to different hotels. Ours was the third or so. We arrived at the beautiful majestic looking Hotel Windsor, which was just opposite of the parliament house. The hotel staff are always very nice. They will always greet us happily and hold the door for us. Our luggage was given to the staff to bring up while we did the check-in process (brought up to us a while later). The front desk staff was also friendly and provided lots of useful information.

 

The hotel lift is so cute with manual buttons like a type writer. You cannot even tell if you have pressed the button since it won't be lighted or anything. And guess what! We witnessed how the door of one of the lifts was stucked! I think the staff eventually pried it open and the people inside were all relieved to be out from the trap. No one was really upset about it though, all seemed so smiley. Maybe it was an interesting experience for them. The lift is really slow too! So we always hoped nobody takes the lift from level 4 or something. Our room was only on level 2.

Other than this minor "issue", the interior design of the hotel is really nice. Victorian style & has a very vintage feel. The chandelier and the flowers decoration are beautiful. The room itself is a little  small but really cozy. I only felt that the bed could be bigger! If you are a person who is particular about your pillow, it is great news to know that Hotel Windsor provides a pillow menu. We requested for 2 types of pillows on two different days and somehow they never removed the original set. We ended up with so many pillows!

Dinner at Sempre Pizza & Calzone - 

Dinner was a random walk down the street. I was quite tired and did not want to put in too much effort to decide on the food to eat.

We had a Sienna & Prova (Total: A$42) from the menu. It was a little difficult to make the choice of what to go for. We were unsure of quite a number of ingredients on the menu. It was not as clear cut to us as a chicken curry or hawaiian pizza at Pizza Hut. It was so Italian, or how I believed it to be Italian :D.

The taste is distinctly different from the Singapore localised ones. But the calzone and pizza were both tasty. One of them was a little salty if I remembered correctly. We did not really take the olive oil & chilli provided. My bf did not enjoy the dinner as much as I did.

We had a walk around the neighbourhood and I felt like my eyes were closing. I was so sleepy already. It was still so bright at 8pm or so. That night was windy and very cool! I have read about Melbourne's drastic weather change and I was excited for it.