From my bus exploration the day before, I earmarked the locations I wanted to get to know better–Queen Victoria Market and Lygon Street. My other had the good sense of buying a myKi card at 7-11, which allowed us to hop on and off to any bus in the city as often as we liked for a day pass fee of AU$6. Nice.
We grabbed a muffin and coffee at a nearby café while waiting for the bank to open at 9 a.m. but when we got to the bank, we saw a posting saying that the new opening time will be 9:30. We decided to postpone the currency exchange and took the bus to Queen Victoria market.
It was a blustery walk to the bus station and my nose was dripping from hay fever but I forgot all that when we arrived at the market. We entered the deli area and were welcomed by cheese of every predilection! I fought the urge to buy because I was starting to worry about my baggage allowance to Auckland.
We walked towards the open stalls selling bottled items and fresh flowers but I caught a whiff of a pollen-loaded breeze and started to sneeze like crazy. My throat began to constrict so I ran indoors, bought a bottled water and took an antihistamine. We cut short our QV market tour then and decided to proceed to Lygon.
After having some money changed at Commonwealth Bank, we rode the free city tram to Lygon. The stop was a short walk to Lygon Street, but when we got there, most of the restaurants were still closed. We agreed to check out the University of Melbourne to kill time. It began to rain so we took our jackets out but we were able to advance just a few meters before it started to pour. We took shelter under one of the buildings. Just as we were preparing to abandon our UM visit, the sun showed up so we proceeded.
We went inside the visitor center to ask if they had a gift shop. They had two, the main located at the heart of the campus. It’s been years since I visited a university campus so I felt very nostalgic. It didn’t take much to recall how I felt as a college student–the future held so much promise.
We saw some nice items at the UM gift shop but some of the sizes were off so we just got a UM hoodie and a mug.
Lygon was coming to life when we got back. We couldn’t decide where to eat so we judged the restaurants based on the size of the crowd it attracted. One stood out–Caffe Noturnno. We loved it. The pizza and Rigatoni Matriciana at Caffe Noturnno were just amazing. And while I’m not a lover of cheesecake, theirs was superb.
After lunch, we rode a bus from the UM stop and got off one stop too early, right at the heart of the shopping district where we saw these street artists.
Since this was our only free day to visit St. Kilda, we braved the fickle weather and went there after a short rest at our hotel. It wasn’t the best day to go because the wind was invariably strong. It was almost too cold for us but we sucked it up and ran to the nearest coffeeshop we could find. The boardwalk was empty and most of the stores were closed but we were amazed to see people from the adjacent indoor pool running to the beach for a quick dip in the water. Maybe it was therapeutic?
Back at the CBD, we had dinner at Rare, a highly rated steak place in Tripadvisor. We wanted our Angus because this was Australia, but, to be honest, I’ve tasted better steaks back home (or maybe, my taste is simply too Pinoy). After dinner, it began to rain again. Thankfully, the restaurant was near our hotel so we made a dash for it.
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