Melbourne in a day

Our journey in Australia started from Melbourne. The plan was to spend few hours in Melbourne city seeing some important places and then proceed to great ocean road. We chose to stay in a hotel near the airport as our flight was scheduled to land at 9:30 in the night. In the morning, I rented the car from Hertz location near the hotel.

Melbourne is known as cultural capital of Australia. Since most tourist locations in Melbourne was around central business district, we decided to drive to the centre and park the car. It was Sunday and driving in the city was easy and could find parking slot at a cheaper rate. One challenge I faced while driving in Melbourne was hook turn —> take right from left most lane in few junctions!!

Flinders street station

As we came out of parking garage, we saw the Flinders street railway station. The main attraction is the architecture of the building.

Federation square

Opposite to railway station with nice pathways and buildings. It is the venue for arts, cultural and public events in Melbourne. It was a nice place to sit and relax.

Walking along the Yarra river

Yarra river flows through the central business district. There are nice pathways built next to the river. It is also a good spot to get some nice photos of Melbourne skyline. The area though less crowded was busy with various activities – rowing on the river, jogging, cruises etc.

Skydeck

We crossed Yarra river over Evan Walker bridge to reach the Eureka Skydeck. The lift took us to the observatory situated at 88th floor of the 975ft skyscraper. Unlike the KL tower and Petronas tower in Malaysia, there was no waiting time and we were at the top within few minutes.

The view from the top was amazing. I have visited many such towers but each brings in unique experience.

We roamed around central business district for some time before eating lunch at Saravanaa Bhavan. It was the only meal we had outside in Australia. We cooked ourselves for rest of the days.

Street art

We spent sometime at Hosier lane enjoying the street art. Since lot of tourists were looking to take selfies and portraits, the street was quite crowded. In between the people, there was a person who was drawing on the wall!!