48 Hours in Melbourne

A not-so-perfect two day itinerary

Melbourne was never really on my list of Aussie places to go, but with a flight to Exmouth connecting through Melbourne I decided to try to make a weekend of it. But this is The Bitter Bitch so I’m gonna give it to you straight - it was my least favorite place to visit. Yes, I went in the winter, and yes it was fucking cold, but there was a little more to it.

And so we arrived…

It was a super early flight from Newcastle, and I was still jetlagged from my trip to Sydney. We flew into Melbourne, and the first thing I noticed was that it was cold cold. It was gloomy with a light drizzle but it felt like the Arctic tundra. No matter how many layers I put on, my finger tips were still freezing to the bone. We waited in the cluster fuck that is arrivals for well over an hour hoping the rental car shuttle wasn’t just a myth. Our cheapo rental was no Hertz or Avis so we ended up on some wild back alley in a junkyard with a chain link fence. The cars were all beat to shit so no pressure avoiding curbs this trip. We jammed three big luggage pieces and three relatively large people into something that looked like a Ford Fiesta and were finally on our way.

Before the heater had even started heating, we were at our first stop - South Melbourne Market. We came just for the dumplings at Dim Sims, a welcome respite from the corner store meat pies I’d been dining on in days past. Dim Sims has a pretty easy menu to choose from - steamed or fried. I ordered a steamed one and poured some brown stuff on it. It was the size of a softball and filled with meat…and damn if it wasn’t good. I got in line and had another. I went back for a third but was ended up sticking it in a carton to graze on later.

We spent the better part of a few hours there freezing to fucking death, jamming our faces with hot pork dumplings and some kind of spiced wine. There was a great spread of stands, from very expensive to totally chop shop. Breads, chocolates, and kangaroo leather galore. After gorging on a few different trays of local oysters, we made it to our “hotel” (a friend of a friend’s spare room). Upon entering I immediately noticed it was fucking freezing inside too, the back door ajar for the dog to roam in and out of. I started to wonder if these people truly enjoyed the misery of such shitty weather or were completely unaware of just how miserable it was. Several hours into the bone-chilling cold and I decided to go to sleep. Midday. No fucks nap time. And I slept the rest of the day away in an effort to warm my extremities, dreaming of Dim sims and heated blankets.

My first night in Melbourne…

I was forced awake by my traveling companions who said I was absolutely not allowed to stay in bed all night. After several hours of midday sleep, I felt almost functional again. I woke from my dumpling coma with warm-er fingers and no immediate signs of food poisoning from the raw street meat, so that was a good sign. I jumped in a quick shower and felt somewhat revitalized by the hot water until I walked outside and remembered it was still cold. In the house. Outside of the house. Just about everywhere they wanted me to go. People talk about seasonal depression but I was beginning to feel afflicted too, just on a more 24 hour freezing to fucking death basis.

We cruised across town to the Napier Hotel, another must-see stop for my Aussie friends. It was somehow just as I expected and yet nothing like it. You see, the Napier Hotel is a famous landmark because it was featured this show called Jack Irish about this Australian private investigator/drunk who works out of the “Prince of Prussia”. My Aussie friend insisted I binge watch all three seasons so that I could really get a flavor for the place. However, when we got there it was nothing like I expected. First, the camera really does make things look a hell of a lot bigger and so does the absence of tables, chairs, and a bunch of drunkards. We squeezed into the only open table right behind the huge wooden door. 200 lbs of salty American stuck in the ass crack of a tavern door all night, right in the crosshairs of every mild draft that seeped through that hinge. There were no TVs anywhere in the place, and I realized that this was the kind of pub where you actually had to engage with other people. I tried my best for 30 minutes until I decided the constant sear of windchill to my face was better than the intermittent blow up my ass and excused myself to the streets.

I walked around for awhile, photographing local art and popping into shops on the lane until I was rudely evicted by a crossdresser in a thrift shop. Come to find out, everything shuts down at 6. On a Friday. In the city. This was probably my first big culture shock of the trip. Eventually I found a small convenience store and gorged myself on chips, chocolates, and a gallon of Arizona tea, walking the drizzly back alleys of Melbourne like a transient, chugging from my jug as I stumbled across town. When I arrived back at the Napier, I was pleasantly surprised to find a plate of artisanal cheeses and a cute guy at our table. I spent the rest of the night bingeing on someone else’s cheese plate, downing pints of local lager, and talking off grid living with the bike riding, tree hugging Melbournian at my table.

Adventures on day 2…

I woke up with absolutely no will to live. It was cold, again, and I’m a bitch for at least the first hour my eyes are open. Unfortunately for me, I agreed to accompany the Aussies to see the one’s mother for breakfast so we headed out to meet up with mom.

After a quick meet and greet we went down to the famous Brighton bathing boxes, a bunch of colored swim shacks lined along the Brighton coast. I’ve seen them in a million pictures and knew it would make a great shot for the website. Parking was a bitch, reminding me a lot of trying to find a spot along the skinny roads in San Francisco. We hiked down to the beach where I discovered it to be a little less than idyllic. The beach was dirty and smelled like a dumpster. There was a lot of litter and debris strewn about. Then I saw a swimmer emerge from the lapping waves and couldn’t believe there were people out there, actually swimming. It again reminded me so much of the bay area. That’s when my buddy told me that one of the boxes just recently sold…for $40k. Stunned. Absolutely stunned.

After absorbing the boxes for a quick minute, we made a break for the Melbourne Laneways. This was the coup de grace of my trip to Victoria. I’d read all the about these intricate art installations all over the CBD and I couldn’t wait to see them for myself. I’d read tons of articles on the lane layouts and thought I had the whole things mapped out. But, again, I was wrong. I never considered what an absolute cluster fuck the CBD was going to be like on a Saturday or how much actual travel this little adventure was going to require. We picked a street spot and paid for two hours, what we thought was plenty of time to walk some alleyways and get back.

LOL.

It’s best to look at the Laneways as one large maze rather than many little neddles in a haystack. When you talk about going to visit the Laneways, you’re actually talking about going to see a grid of over 140 different alleyways and hidden corridors, some of which don’t even have official street names, laid out over a century and a half ago. Some terminate, some go into or exit other buildings, some turn into other streets, and some are tiny walkways with just one or two pieces of art. Not having a fresh handle on how to navigate it took us much longer and much farther than we expected, resulting in a mad dash from tram to tram to beat the clock before I flew all the way home to discover some ungodly bill from the city of Melbourne for a parking infraction.

As with anything else, being boots on the ground helped me a lot in understanding how to move around the area and what would work best for next time. For more on the Laneways, check out my blog post here.

Our last night of shenanigans…

I woke from yet another nap with about 30 minutes to spare before we headed to a game of footy at the Marvel Stadium. Geelong was playing St Kilda, whatever that was, and we were going to check it out. Five of us piled into a small car and again drove all over tarnation to another seedy carpark. I’d been told to expect it to be freezing so I squeezed into two layers of stretch pants and a borrowed a jacket and scarf.

We began to walk to a casino near the stadium to meet up with more friends, a stroll from what I understood. We walked up the street through a park and down the street across some water and up some stairs. Up and down and around and around for what seemed like ever. After the unexpected hike at the Laneways, I was cold and exhausted and I just wanted to sit down. 15 minutes later we were heading up an embankment in the opposite direction as all the other people in jerseys and I almost faked an injury to go home. Eventually we made it to the casino where I discovered a mass of drunk Aussies standing around a lobby, a few chairs scattered about here and there. We were standing. And talking.

About an hour later, we left the casino and walked BACK to the stadium. Up the stairs, around the level, to the bar. More standing. Now I’m fucking starving, cold, and my feet hurt. I settled on a Stella and a meat pie from concessions. It was fucking awful. But eventually my ass found the plastic seat and I was not required to move again for several hours. In the interim, beers were brought and embied and tall atrractive men ran around the grass in tiny shorts called silkies. Eventually, it all ended and we made out way back to the car in the cold dark night.

The next morning I sprang out of bed. I couldn’t fucking wait to leave Melbourne and the bitter cold that enveloped it. Since visiting, I’ve read that Melbourne is literally one of the best places on earth to live but with my limited interaction with the traffic, weather, and never ending meat pie options, it’s probably not for me. Regardless, should you make the trek, definitely stop for some dumplings, indulge in the oysters, get lost at the Laneways, catch a game of footy, and spend a sunset watching the penguins come to shore at St. Kilda. Just remember to bring some gloves.