After mentioning to Gary that the pastries that we had yesterday were some of the best we’d ever had, we were greeted with a competitor this morning, goodies from Born & Bread Bakehouse!
We decided to do a mix and match to gather a more complete flavour profile.
Needless to say, they tasted as good as they looked. 10/10 awarded to the Geelong bakery.
After a glorious breakfast, we took the train into Melbourne for the day. This was our first visit since December of 2015, so we were excited to see how the city had since evolved.
The first new arrival we noticed was oBike, a pay per ride service powered by a handy mobile app.
There were thousands of these bikes littering the streets. We spoke to folks operating a local bicycle shop later on in the day to gather their views. Although they were happy that cycling was becoming more popular, the sudden flooding of the market had left a dent in sales.
We swiftly traversed central Melbourne, from West to East on our search for Fitzroy.
Having shot over the core of the city, we stopped for a quick bite to eat in order to refuel and regroup.
Alleyways can be uninviting, but this one was home to Manchester Press!
Manchester Press specialises in coffee & bagels… so we tested a cross section of the menu!
H. tried a blueberry bagel, with blueberry toppings, edible flowers and a generous helping of cream cheese.I opted for the peanut butter bagel… a seemingly simpler dish!
After the quick bagel banquet we headed North-East to Carlton Gardens, home to the Royal Exhibition Building and Melbourne Museum. Two very different buildings, the exhibition building is classical in style, the museum is a feat of modern design and engineering.
Looking across Carlton Park toward the Royal Exhibition Building.Stone relics are scattered outside the museum. It was interesting seeing these detailed blocks up close.H. stood beside one of the blocks to show scale!Initially we thought this was a stunt ramp, but as it turns out, it is not.Just Eastward of the museum was Fitzroy, a neighbourhood with a high reputation!
Fitzroy, an inner city suburb, had been recommended to us by Annette. The district was a vibrant, friendly and hip. The older buildings were steeped in character, the newer were crisp and sleek while respecting and integrating with their elder counterparts beautifully.
The trams are a real asset to Melbourne, more on them later!An interesting apartment block shrouded in greenery!Like central Melbourne, the street art scene was strong in Fitzroy too.
Doomsday arrived before we knew it…A nice contemporary adaptation to the older building. Clean and simple.More street art!Fitzroy was home to many a single storied terrace in red brick, with yellow brick highlights!The aspiration for phase 2 of the world trip. Perth to Melbourne in a camper!Hidden down a lane was a great bicycle shop that mainly rebuilt bikes from old vintage frames.A shot down the lane into the bicycle haven.After a good explore we bundled out of Fitzroy, and headed back towards central.Although we’re walking fanatics, we decided to take the FREE tram tour loop to hopefully see a little bit more of the city!The loop!The rail!The tram!We jumped on, and settled in for the hour journey. Key sights were summarised over a PA system.We stopped for a quick pause outside Parliament House. There was a production team in filming, hopefully we feature!H. enjoying the comfy seat on the vintage tram!
After the tram we were in a good frame of mind for food. On the recommendation of two key influencers, we hit up Lord of the Flies – a vegetarian fast food restaurant! We wolfed this down too quick to capture on camera unfortunately!
To round off the day, before heading back out to Geelong, we stopped off at Bar Humbug.
