Best of Melbourne: things to do and see

I had a great week in Melbourne, a good city to visit, albeit the weather is always a gamble. But we were lucky, not too hot or wet, and even managed to see the Australia Day celebrations. 

I have already posted about the Victoria National Gallery here, definitely worth a visit, while we were there there was the wonderful Warhol-Weiwei exhibition. 

And here were some more of Best of Melbourne things to do and see: 

Australian Open

Tennis! Great to spend one day at the Australian Open and see some tennis stars in the flesh!

Punt tour in the ornamental lake of the Royal Botanic Gardens 

With Punt Tours Melbourne: this was really lovely, takes you away from the tourist hordes and takes you back in time to a romantic Melbourne, like the one from Miss Fisher's Murders

And after punting on the lake time for scones and cream!

Walking around 

We did a bit of shopping, but not much really, the best thing for me was to walk around the city and see the old and new buildings. I like the old traditional houses more, very charming. 

For a full city view you'll need to go on top of the Eureka Tower (Melbourne's tallest building) since the city is too flat to get a panorama shot anywhere else.

Melbourne Zoo

This is a must if you have kids, but even if you don't. My favourite animal in the in whole world is the Platypus, so I was happy to finally see one in the flesh (in fact I went back to see it three times!). The photo is from the sign outside the tank though, it was swimming around happily and I didn't want to disturb it with a flash.

A trip outside Melbourne to see the animals in the wild

If you have time and car pop out of the city and you will find Australian kangaroos jumping around. 

The kangaroos were cool, but the highlight of the trip was to spot a baby echidna! So cute!

The Italian bit…

I will talk more about this in the next post (veggie guide to Melbourne), since the most important thing here, after the Italian Museum and various Italian associations that you may visit if you are Italian, is the food.  So at this stage I will leave you with some images that will probably lure you to visit the big Italian cafe Brunetti in Lygon St.

Photos  by Alessandra Zecchini ©