Melbourne | Effortlessly Charming

This is our first trip together to this wonderful artsy city just south of Sydney in the state of Victoria. Melbourne is rank 20th (tied with Ottawa, Montreal, Perth & Oslo) according to Mercer's Top Cities For Quality Of Living 2024. We will find out at the end of this 17-day trip if this city does live up to it's reputation.

Day 1 - Flight to Tullamarine & Christmas Eve in Melbourne

This flight was serviced by Qantas Airways and it is considered to be one of the longest flight out of Daniel K. Inouye International, coming in at 11 hours and 25 minutes. The Qantas lounge is situated at the ground floor next to the beautiful Cultural Gardens.

On this segment, we were served two main meals - a breakfast and a 3-course lunch.

The flight itself was smooth. I was lucky to catch a short but beautiful glimpse of an island atoll as we flew by at 40,000 feet. I believe this island atoll is part of Noumea.

As we came in to land at Melbourne International at Tullamarine, the plane encountered severe crosswind, in which the captain decided to abort and go around. In the end, the captain managed to land the aircraft very smoothly.

Go Around!

After getting our rental car, we headed into city center for some long awaited Malaysian goodies. Since it was Christmas eve, many shops are closed and those that are still open, will be closing much earlier. We managed to find a little quaint kopitiam-style shop called Lulu's selling typical Malaysian street food. We had their famous char kuey teow and teh tarik.

There were quite a lot of people roaming the streets, and it was quite difficult finding street parking. After our hearty meal, we checked into our rental home at Kew. Here are some photos of it.

After freshening up, we decided to take a drive around the city to check out the night lights. One particular area is the Docklands. It is highly gentrified, with many old warehouses being torn down to make way for expensive waterfront condominiums and shopfronts. The area was still under construction as we could see the many cranes standing where new building were about to rise. The area is young and hip. Unfortunately, not all moved in so not as brightly lit. Give it a few more years when all is done and this will certainly be a bustling area with a waterfront promenade.

Day 2 -