Melbourne, Australia - Nov 13, 2011

The second largest city in Australia and the capital of Victoria, Melbourne sometimes has trouble escaping Sydney’s shadow. But life can be good in the shade; Melbourne reigns over Australia culturally and has been dubbed the planet’s most livable city (sorry Vancouver). Distinctive neighbourhoods, leafy streets and the clean, efficient transport system mean that Melbourne rarely feels like a city of 3.5 million.

Melbourne was formally established in 1835 when John Batman arrived with a group of entranced Tasmanian entrepreneurs. Batman was shrewd. He struck a bargain with local tribal leaders and was granted rights to develop more than 500,000 acres in exchange for a meager collection of blankets, mirrors and other Western goods. Local architecture followed popular prevailing European styles of the era, but with an Asian eye on harmony. Military surveyor Robert Hoddle was careful to include plenty of parks and trees in his city plan. By 1840, more than 10,000 people were ‘Marvelous Melbourne’ residents.

Our day began and for the most part really stayed in the fabulous Queen Victoria Market. Two years ago this market was closed the day our ship called here but not today, this is really one of the best markets around. Take the revolving market in New York combined with the variety of merchandise available at the Hong Kong markets and you have the Queen Victoria Market all without the price bartering. A ‘T’ shirt here is $5.00, not starting at $20.00 and then ending at $5.00 - good prices, good selection of a complete variety of items, locals come to this market to get everything from hardware supplies to clothes (basic cloth items, not necessarily tourist stuff), to of course tourist type items. The day was perfect for Jan as she was missing the Circle Craft Market today at home, so we turned this into her Circle Craft day, we arrived at about 11:00am and left at the 4:00 closing. We also hit a more artisan style market around the National Gallery.

Coming into Melbourne

 Sights on the way to the Queen Victoria Market along with Jan and a few of the shopping bags. A short lunch before heading back into the market. No we did not eat at Mickey D’s just brought our market food there to use the free Wifi.

 We poked our head into the National Galley for a few pictures.

 We did do a bit of sightseeing from the City Circle Tram and yes they do have the same occupy protest going on here.

 Federation Square is a very popular meeting place and amazing but they have all these very comfortable chairs all over the plaza, wonder how long these would last in Vancouver.

 Tram back to the ship for our 8:00 dinner and tonight was the very popular, every seat occupied Indonesian Crew Show, an excellent production as usual of many of the ship’s cabin stewards and waiter/waitress staff. Great for us this time as we directly knew three people in the show, identified first is Dadang our head waiter, and then Ketut, our assistant dining room manager and on the right our main door man greeter at the restaurant. A very entertaining night.

 We say good bye to Melbourne in the warm evening as the ship sailed at midnight as the lightening and thunder gave us a great light show on the horizon.

Tomorrow we visit one of our favorite cities, Sydney.

Tip or comment of the day. Comes from a placard from one of the statues in the Treasury Gardens.