It is very easy to get around the Central Business District (CBD) of Melbourne. All the trams that run through the CBD area are free -- no need to buy tickets, just hop on! Just make sure to hop off before your tram leaves the free zone.
This morning we took a tram to check out St. Patrick's cathedral, Australia's tallest church (so tall I couldn't fit the tiptop of the spire into the photo!). It has a neo-gothic façade but the most interesting thing about the outside is the contrasting two-toned look of the stonework -- the darker basalt stone lower down is called bluestone, but the tan-colored spires are a much lighter sandstone.
It took more than 80 years to construct the cathedral, due to its massive scope and the boom-and-bust economic cycles of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The foundation stone was laid in 1858 but the spires weren't finished until 1939. Unfortunately the weight of the building caused the stained glass windows to buckle and crack over time. The cathedral underwent a restoration in 1997 and the windows were repaired.
Melbourne has some wonderful gardens and parks to stroll through. The weather today was mild and clear so we decided to explore a few of the city's green spaces.
Just a few blocks from the cathedral is the Fitzroy Gardens, which has some inviting pathways and massive shade trees. Because we are in the Southern Hemisphere, it's just turning autumn here and the leaves are starting to drop.
In one section of the park is a quaint model Tudor village, built by an Englishman who enjoyed making models as a hobby. This village was given to the city of Melbourne in 1948 in gratitude for Melbourne sending shipments of food to Britain during WWII.
Just near the village is the Fairies Tree -- a treestump carved in the 1930's by Ola Cohn who dedicated the carvings to "the fairies and those who believe in them, for they will understand how necessary it is to have a fairy sanctuary". The colorful carvings consist of native Australian plants and animals and, of course, plenty of fairies.
There are several stone buildings in the Fitzroy Gardens but the most notable one is a cottage where the famous explorer Captain James Cook supposedly lived as a boy in the 1730's. It is a bit weird that it's here in Australia, since: 1. Australia wasn't settled by the British until 1788, and 2. James Cook spent his boyhood thousands of miles away in Yorkshire England. The final owner of the cottage (when it was still back in Yorkshire) put it up for sale in the 1930's and a local Melbourne gentleman bought it, had it shipped here, and donated it to the city to commemorate Captain Cook's "discovery" of the East Coast of Australia. (Let's not forget that there were hundreds of thousands of people already here at that time...)
We wandered back into the urban laneways not far from the gardens to check out some very colorful alleys -- Duckboard Place, AC/DC Lane, and Hosier Lane.
Duckboard Place actually had some beautiful murals that were very skillfully done. As we turned a corner the artwork in the next lane was a little more grungy and less refined. There used to be a bar in this laneway where the Australian band AC/DC played in their early years -- the laneway is named after them.
We started getting hungry so we hopped on a tram to the Queen Victoria Market, the oldest continuously running public market in Melbourne -- it's been in business since 1878.
This place is huge -- there are more than 600 vendor stalls selling Australian-themed souvenirs, crafts, and locally-sourced fish, meats, fruits, and vegetables. You could spend all day here just wandering around and doing your shopping. But we were in search of the food stalls -- we had read that the market was a great place to grab some lunch. But unfortunately for our lunch plans, the food hall area is currently under refurbishment and not expected to re-open until April -- we would be waiting for our lunch for a very long time!
We were a little disappointed because we always make it a point to check out world-class markets when we travel, like the Boqueria in Barcelona, Torvehallerne in Copenhagen, etc. But not this time. Maybe we will have to schedule another trip to Melbourne someday!
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