When I daydreamed about coming to Australia, I always pictured the Opera House and gorgeous bridges in Sydney. Everyone that found out I was coming to Australia told me that Melbourne was going to be my kind of town. I picked up a Melbourne sit en route to a Sydney sit (that was later canceled) and it was honestly entirely worth the 2 days of travel on its own. They weren’t kidding! Brimming with museums, botanical gardens, parks, street art, insanely diverse food options, gorgeous architecture, excellent shopping, and natural wonders… there’s so much to love! I was instantly smitten, and I think you will be too.

If I could compare Melbourne to North American cities, I’d liken it to Seattle or Vancouver. It’s metropolitan, but very clean, the people are extremely friendly, the public transportation is really intuitive, and the food is incredible. I was dumbstruck by the views from my adorable apartment in The Docklands, and had wonderful walks with my terrific charge, Toby.

It was just a quick walk and free tram ride into the heart of Melbourne, and I was awed by the buildings and the beautiful integration of old and new. Melbourne has the largest tram system in the world, and they still run some amazing antique trolleys. This is an old gold rush town that burned fast and hot. It’s a crazy mix of Victorians from the boom, art deco, and modern skyscrapers, and the juxtaposition is fascinating.

I especially appreciated the abundance of markets and arcades. The Royal Arcade felt like going back in time. Spellbox is a particularly enchanting magic shop. I thought the famous Hopetoun Tea House had moved from its original location to the Arcade, but it turns out the arcade stole the menu and cranked out an imposter in the old location before the new owners of the IP could get their location open around the corner. I wish I’d known that before I went rather than getting blasted with all kinds of links and angry messages from the original owner on Instagram. The room was gorgeous, the scones were magnificent, and the window display case was picture perfect. If you’re still willing to go, I’d recommend a weekday pop in for an a la carte order vs reserving a weekend high tea. The OG team will be reopening on Bourke soon, so I’d suggest just waiting to go there. My favorite arcade was Cathedral Arcade, I was completely enamored with the faux stained glass ceilings and adorable boutiques.

I loved that the alleys were filled with tables, lights, street art and festive cafes. Melbourne has more restaurants and cafes per capita than any other city in the world, and every single one I tried was fantastic. Everything is pretty pricey here, including the food. Tax is included in the prices, and tipping isn’t really a thing. You’ll see an occasional tip jar at a coffee counter or ice cream shop, but what you see on a menu is what you are going to pay on a weekday. Most places add a 10% surcharge on weekends, public holidays, or when they are slammed. Supposedly there are some famously cheap eats in the city, but I was averaging about $25-$40 for a casual meal out.

The city is incredibly diverse, and is home to the largest populations of Greek and Italian people outside of their native countries. The asian food is INSANE. Dim Sum is called Dim Sim here, and I was excited to discover that Shanghai Street served sticky rice shumai. I love sticky rice, I’m addicted to shumai, I’d never had them together and it is a total win.

The time difference and distance finally made me feel a little homesick, and I find that Vietnamese food helps bring a bit of home to me. I don’t usually find Yelp or Google reviews on Vietnamese places all that reliable, nothing is ever as good as my mom’s and I usually leave disappointed. Honestly, I don’t care about the ambience or service, my only requirement is that the pho is good. I went to three different places that were all FANTASTIC. Heartbaker BunMee serves combos of their sandwiches with either a cup of pho or a spring roll- which I honestly wish every Vietnamese place should offer. Their crispy pork belly was OUT OF THIS WORLD.

Melbourne is mad for coffee, they are seriously hard core about it. I’m not sure why gelato and bubble tea are also prevalent, there’s a shop on every corner. Piccolina Gelateria always had a consistently long line, I walked past the beautiful shop a dozen times before I read a sign for limited edition ricotta macadamia nut gelato and hopped in. I had a lot of terrific gelato in Italy, but this was the best I’ve ever had and made my eyeballs roll back in my head with joy.

I had to work for a couple of fun food finds. I was looking at google maps trying to find something to do around my second housesit when “Dingo Ate My Taco” jumped out at me. Some Austinites are serving up brisket tacos and birria down under, but even if that didn’t call to my homesick heart, the name sure did. They do pop-ups at a couple different spots around the city, so check their IG for their weekly schedule. I DM’ed them to see where I could buy a tshirt because their branding was on point and I wanted to have a taste of home for my birthday. The food was excellent, but the process is a bit bizarre. It’s a little weird that you have to buy a 3 pack of birria tacos, you can’t get just one. You cant get chips and queso, you have to buy chips and salsa and add an order of queso so you can dip something in it. I’d skip the queso, but don’t sleep on the brisket or fried avocado tacos. They absolutely rival Austin’s Taco Deli and Nashville’s Mas Tacos, which are my hometown favorites. They kindly gifted me a tshirt and I had a badass birthday celebration with them.

A google map scan also put Lune Croissants on my radar, and a friend saw that I was in town and told me I HAD to go. I wasn’t expecting a line around the block when I went to kick off my Saturday market adventure day there. Apparently this place has a massive cult following and a very unique line up. They had pizza, carrot cake, and other interesting spins on lovely laminated dough. They were good, but couldn’t quite compare to Sacramento’s Ginger Elizabeth. They have a sister donut shop called Moon Crullers. Every vendor at the Rose St Craft Market had them at their tables and there was constant chatter about them from both the employees and attendees. I’m not really a donut person, so I didn’t think much about it. But when I walked right past it and there wasn’t a line, I had to pop in. I had a purse full of Lune that I wouldn’t order again, but the lemon cruller is going to haunt my dreams.

The Rose St Craft Market brought me to Fitzroy, and the area is amazing. It is FULL of street art, unique shops, interesting restaurants, and I happened upon a fun vintage market across the street from the artfully curated craft fair. You have your usual jewelry, clothing, ceramics, bath products, paintings and prints, and baby gifts. The I Am Someone booth sold the most moving photos to provide housing, education, and food for impoverished children and stole my heart. I’ll be ordering prints as soon as I have walls again. They really speak to the power of people. Brunswick Street was beautiful, and the window displays were worthy of a whole day of wandering. I was particularly drawn to the displays in the flower shops, and Zetta Florence was a dreamy paper/gift shop that I pretty much wanted one of everything from.

The Queen Victoria Market is the most famous market in Victoria and largest open air market in the Southern Hemisphere. There are over 400 vendors, food stalls for blocks, flea market finds and food trucks. They have a Wednesday Winter Night market, but the locals all told me it was long lines and madness. I couldn’t even make myself wait in the line for the $25 truffle grilled cheese at a weird time in the middle of the week, but it was a fabulous foodie field trip.

You know I didn’t come to Melbourne without making it to the museums. Interestingly enough, many of the museums offer free entry to some collections but charge for special exhibits. The National Gallery of Victoria is free to enter, but there is a cost for tickets for the current Picasso retrospective (which I skipped.) Home to the world’s largest stained glass ceiling, there were also a couple Monets, Degas, even a Rodin Thinker and Frank Lloyd Wright furniture which made me very happy, as did the temporary Queer Stories exhibit. Across the street, the ACMI Museum has a fantastic free gallery of interactive exhibits on film, tv, and games. I had so much fun playing in a foley studio, watching the storyboard process for Shrek, checking out the Thor costumes, and learning about the evolution to movies. I paid to visit the Tate Light exhibit to see some Monets, a Kusama infiniti cube, and the very cool modern light displays. Both museums were housed in beautiful buildings, and a perfect respite from the rainy and gray winter days. The Victorian Artists Society has an stunning historical home and houses art classes and exhibitions that are totally worth a pop into.

I’ve visited Van Gogh Immersive experiences in Paris, Buffalo, Chicago, and New York. I absolutely love them, but you can only justify going to so many. I was good and skipped the ones happening while I was in Austin, Houston, Denver, and San Francisco, and fully planned to forgo the Melbourne one too. I complimented my hosts’ Van Gogh masks and they told me I absolutely had to go to The Lume’s Van Gogh experience because they have a recreation of the sidewalk cafe, and you can have dessert while watching the beautiful projections. How could I say no to that? Each of the experiences have similar projection shows, but have unique side features. This one had a drawing class, a mirrored maze of Sunflowers, a replica of the famous bedroom, and a fantastic integration of Van Gogh quotes taken from the Letters to Theo. It was by far my favorite of the experiences, and I literally planned a trip to Paris around a visit to the original show by the same company producing this one.

I was so high on Van Gogh Vibes, I made a special trip to Holey Moley when I learned that they had a Van Gogh themed mini-golf course. It’s pretty pricey to play all 27 holes, but if you go early enough on a weekday, they will let you pick which 9 holes you want to play at that entry level price point. The punny putt putt course is all based on film, tv, and pop culture. It’s a little weird to go mini golfing alone, but I’m glad I went. They have fantastic neon, fabulously named and themed courses, and it’s hard not to smile as you roam the rooms.

Sacramento, Philadelphia, and New York City house the most impressive street art to me at home, but Melbourne is the street art capitol of the world and put them all to shame. The neon, murals, sculptures, and signage are dynamic and engaging. There are plenty of guided walking tours, but it’s not difficult to find it yourself. ACDC Lane, Hosier Lane and Chinatown were my favorite spots for scoping out great graffiti.

The Flinders Street Station is the oldest one in Australia, and absolutely stunning. It’s right across the street from the Arts Centre, and the signage for 9 to 5 the Musical worked on me. I made a matinee and a side trip to the Australian Music Vault, a free exhibit on Australian Artists in the unique art complex. On Sunday’s there’s a free art and food market on the lawn. This theatre is pretty unique in that the multiple stages are all underground. It felt really bizarre to reach stadium seating taking multiple sets of stairs DOWN. I highly suggest going, whether you attend a ticketed event or just take advantage of their free programming. If you’re a solo traveler, they have single seats on the loge for a relatively inexpensive (and covid safe) experience.

While theaters and concerts are more my houses of worship, I am drawn to churches and cathedrals too. Melbourne is chock full of charming churches, with St Paul’s and St Patrick’s being the most famous and totally tour worthy. I lit a candle for you in each of them, and basked in the beauty of the buildings.

Melbourne is home to some incredible independent bookstores. It was hard to not go home with the dozens of books that caught my eye at The Hill of Content and Paperback Bookshop. This nomadic lifestyle doesn’t really let my literary love indulge in much more than Libby the Library app. Real life libraries are still fun for book browsers like me, and people that love rotundas, exhibits on rare books, stained glass and public art collections will also enjoy a field trip to the State Library of Victoria. I could have spent an entire day strolling around those shelves.

Something like 25% of Metro Melbourne is public parks. There is so much gorgeous green space, it’s hard to imagine buying a ticket to a garden. I happened to catch one of the last nights of the Lightscape at the Royal Botanic Garden. You have to walk past the Shrine of Remembrance to get to the garden, and it had its own light show between the city lights and the gorgeous moon. Once I entered the event, it was a complete zoo. It was wall to wall people snapping photos of some uplit trees. I was a little nervous that I had gotten myself into a total dud, until we turned the corner and ran into the first interactive exhibit. There were some beautiful light installations paired to music, lasers and smoke, Christmas light arches, and a massive neon tree. I’ve been to several Chihuly Night exhibits at botanic gardens, but this is a really lovely twist. I am SO glad that I went and hope that other botanical gardens will take an opportunity to double their traffic with something similar.

But you don’t need a botanical garden to enjoy some beautiful blooms in Melbourne. It was kind of a trippy experience to be in a winter coat and admiring spring gardens in August. I took walks in several neighborhoods just to snap photos of the homes and yards. I can totally see why Melbourne is consistently voted one of the best cities in the world to live. Visas and citizenship are notoriously difficult to obtain in Australia, but the next best thing is a magical Melbourne vacation.