Our time at the winery had ended. A combination of a personality mismatch, a desire to travel more, and the knowledge that we would have to return to Boston at some point all combined to lead us to this decision. So we booked travel to Melbourne, and away we went.
The last morning sun in Canowindra. Sadly, I could not find the green running hat I had purchased in Asheville, however. (I think the dog may have grabbed it the night before.) But we were off, and on our way to new adventures.
You get used to constantly losing things when you travel this much. Of course, people lose things around their own homes when they aren't traveling, but you can eventually find a lost sock in your closet, where as you won't ever find a lost sock in a town you may never return to. Oh well.
Good bye, Wine!
Good bye, winery!
Hello Melbourne!
One more note about losing things: Don't plug your phone into the wall at a train station, and then only remember it once the train starts pulling away. Fortunately, the staff aboard the train from Sydney to Melbourne was extraordinarily helpful. When I talked to the train's conductor, he immediately called the station. The station manager grabbed the phone, put it in a parcel, and put it on the next train to Melbourne, which would arrive the following morning.
Upon arrival, we took a little wander around the area we were staying in, South Melbourne. The sunset, unsurprisingly, was pretty good.
This is the city hall for South Melbourne. I don't know if it's actually an independent city, or was at one point, but the building is impressive.
The next morning started early, with us waking at 6:30 to meet the aforementioned train at the station. Low and behold, the phone was on board, and Molly was reunited with her phone.
As we wandered the city, we really got a good feel for the place. It's a graffiti hub, in a good way. For example, knitting graffiti:
I'll have more pictures of the more outrageous alleys in a few days.
Melbourne is known for its Chinatown, so we had to go see.
Molly and I have decided that for a place to have good food, it needs a lot of foreign immigrants to sometimes quite literally spice up the local cuisine. Melbourne has immigrants in spades, so all the food was quite good. New Zealand is beautiful, yes, but the food is downright boring. Imagine the least interesting types of food from American and British cooking, sans curries and local food movements, and that's what you get.
Australia has a strong South East Asian presence, plus Indian, plus Pacific Island, plus lots of American tendency to fuse everything together. So we did eat well.
The public transport in Melbourne is also quite nice. Many major train stations around the periphery of downtown, and street cars serving most of the city. Inside the downtown area (or Central Business District, or CBD) the street cars are free, but not particularly fast. Once they leave the congestion, most of them turn to surface rail with dedicated track, and are a great way to get around.
The building with the peaked roof and the single window up top was our AirBnb.
Melbourne has a decidedly sub-tropical sort of weather. It can be warm and humid, or cool sometimes, but always feels a bit like it might rain one minute and then have the sun come out again.
A good few first days in the city. We wandered a few of the hipper neighborhoods, plus the river front, and downtown.
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