26 and 27 June

We are off to Melbourne for a quick weekend trip.  We are ticketed on JetStar, one of Australia’s bargain airlines, where the less baggage you fly with, the better your fare.  From the looks of the line snaking away from the baggage drop counter, the better your odds of making your flight as well.

While waiting in this line, we had plenty of time to read the posted placard informing us that should we choose to verbally harass or insult or threaten any of the counter agents, we would be in serious trouble.  Now that would normally seem like common sense to me, but given that JetStar had to go to the trouble to print and post such placards, it seems clear that these long and disorganized lines must be a common occurrence.  Comparing this situation with the ease in which we checked in with Qantas last week, we conclude that we are Qantas girls on a JetStar budget.

Bag dropped, security screening complete (nope, didn’t check our IDs this week either), and gate identified, we were headed toward our flight when we were detoured by the opportunity to partake in a free wine tasting.  First up, a spicy shiraz, followed by a smooth cab-shiraz, chased by a one-more-for-the-road merlot.  Apparently the wine went directly to Gina’s head, for before we left the counter to board our plane, she had signed us up for a case of red to be delivered in about a week.

Seated comfortably onboard in our aisle and middle seats that we had been charged an extra $6/seat to select during ticketing, we took note of a 6-foot amazon Australian coming down the aisle, eyeing our empty window seat.  With a smile on her face, she smoothly suggested that if we wanted to just scooch on in, she’d be fine with sitting on the aisle (sigh).  Yes, lady, I’m sure you would be just fine taking our aisle seat while we crammed over into the fuselage.  We gave her credit for her delivery – a well-practiced one, it appeared – but we didn’t give her our aisle seat.

Arriving at the Melbourne airport was like landing in Boise 25 years ago (again, our theory of moving backward in time in Australia).  From the stairs we climbed down to the tarmac below through a haze of jet fuel fumes, to the 30 minute shuttle ride to the city, during which we were treated to a take-me-back-to-college 1980s medley of Thriller, When Doves Cry, and Wake Me Up Before You Go Go.  But better yet, our ride into the city took place on a freeway – a freeway! – imagine that, Sydney.  A freeway into a city via which people can be transported at high speeds.  We loved Melbourne already.

Our first day in Melbourne was spent getting our bearings and exploring the city proper.  Melbourne offers a free, hop-on-hop-off Tourist Bus that circles the city.  The bus is heated, which gave us all the more reason to hop on to escape the cold and blustery winds that had tracked us on our morning walk across the Yarra River.  We bussed through Southbank and the Royal Botanic Gardens park before disembarking for a quick tour on foot of Federation Square, where we planned to later hop back on the comfortably heated bus.  This turned out to be a bit of a logistical error, but we’ll come back to that in a minute.

The visitor centre in Federation Square was quite troubling for us, for it was filled with hiking and walking and biking maps of the Melbourne and greater Victoria area.  For us, this was like stepping into a candy shop and being told that we could pick out whatever we wanted, but we couldn’t take anything home.  Not that Sydney doesn’t have great walking routes – it does, and we have the worn through sneaker soles to prove it – but as we’ve touched on before, the biking in Sydney is not well designed and in our opinion, completely unsafe.  But Melbourne?  A wonderland of planned biking trails and routes, separated from cars and trams and all other things moving about the city.

Now filled with both envy and delight, we headed back to the hop-on-hop-off bus, but now there was a line 30 people deep with half being little people in strollers.  This is a common bus phenomenon in Australia, with parents and grandparents alike constantly rolling strollers (here they call them “prams”) onto and off of the city buses.  Back in Seattle, children have to be extricated and the stroller collapsed before the now overburdened adult can haul their load onto the bus, taking whatever seating that remains.  Not here.  Prams have priority.  That’s okay, but not so great when you’re sitting in one of the front seats because they’re the only seats on the bus with enough space to handle the 8 bags of groceries you just picked up from Woolies that you now have to haul home on the bus because you don’t have a car and why would you anyway as all you would do would be to sit in Sydney traffic while at least the bus sometimes has a bus-only lane and now here comes another damn pram and you have to move because that pram takes priority and the space of three seats to fit on the bus and dangit, there went my avocado rolling down the aisle.

Deterred by the people and prams, we opted for the free tram that runs a loop around the city.  Others apparently had the same idea and our tram filled to capacity, which in a way defeated the purpose, for it was nearly impossible to see out through the tightly packed bodies.  Time for plan C – let’s just start walking.  And walk we did.  Through the Queen Victoria Markets and down to and through the Docklands.  Discovering a Cotsco (!) there, it seemed (financially) prudent to have a look inside.  But a look is all you get.  Oddly enough, a day pass won’t allow you to purchase a thing.  What would be the point of that?  Costco is not about looking, it’s about buying.  In large quantities, no less.  Why would they want to stop us from doing that, even if only for a day?

Back onto the streets of Melbourne, we idled the remainder of the afternoon away, enjoying the hidden laneways, the row of outdoorsy stores on Little Bourke Street, the riverside views along Southbank, and the general vibe of the city – a mixture of Portland (with the river running through it), Bellingham (with the big bay), Denver (with the more outdoorsy focus), and Luzern, Switzerland (the river, the outdoors, and the European-style laneways).  A nice contrast to the hustle and bustle of Sydney.

Our second day in Melbourne was spent on rented bikes.  The kind with big, overly soft seats that actually hurt your bum and tires fat enough to ride through Denali.  Not as sleek as we would normally opt for when riding asphalt around a city, but transportation nonetheless, and our favorite type of transportation at that.

Melbourne being a wonderland of biking trails, it was difficult to pick which route to take, but being loop girls, we selected a combination of trails that took us around and out of the city to bayside St. Kilda (and beyond) and then back to the Docklands and up the Yarra River.  About 50 km in all, with our wheels never traversing a busy road designed only with cars in mind.  To cyclists like us, where it’s not about the mileage or the speed but rather all about just being on the bike and enjoying the passing sights and sounds, it was a heavenly day, one of our best yet in Australia.  We miss being able and inspired to hop on our bikes for a quiet weekend ride.  It’s what we do, it’s who we are.  So thank you, Melbourne, for giving that back to us, however briefly.  In the Melbourne vs. Sydney rivalry, there’s at least one category in which we know Melbourne wins hands down.