Meandering through Melbourne

 Today we have no specific plans for the day.

So after we returned the car and had breakfast, we strolled through a good piece of the CBD (central business district). This is the Wesley Uniting Church. Once a week they have an organ recital BYO lunch with organ music

I am not sure what this building is, but these four buildings are tucked between tall skyscrapers

This was a museum that is part of the RMIT university which is only a few blocks from our hotel

This building sits just a couple of blocks from the Queen  Victoria Market and near the university 

This building is now a sports injury clinic and rehab center, but it originally was a public bath house

This is another part of the RMIT university. This university is ranked in the top 250 of the world

This is probably the most eye catching building I saw in the University campus

Here is another example of small older buildings being nestled in huge new buildings

This was the cross culture church of Christ. Some of the older churches have changed hands and are churches for other religious groups than the ones they were built for

This is a part of the area of the Queen Victoria Market 

The outer walls of the area look like this, while the inside of the building was a series of colors, smells, products, and friendly helpful people.

The market is like the Seattle Pikes Market on steroids 

There are three six huge open air covered markets as they are redoing three more of them. This is one of the building that has no food stuff

Each vendor rents a number of squares for their booths. There is most anything you could buy elsewhere. Clothing, games, toys, books, leather good, cards, and so much more. Everything from almost 10 by 10 feet small handicraft things to vendors taking 20 by 40 or more feet setups a few of the spaces were empty, but it is mid week in low session, so that is not surprising. We thought of seeing if there was a night market here, but the info we found says it only runs in summer as spring is just starting here, they are not going yet.

Hats of every style and size were there even stream punk 

Then there are two huge buildings just for farmers produce

A area for prepared food and buying “ to go” foods

This place get over 10 million tourist a year and has been here since 1878. I saw everyone from tourists like us to people buying there groceries to what I believe were either restaurant or grocery store buyers taking cases of product they had bought out.

Meats, cheeses, eggs, grocery supplies all had large sections. In total the market cover around 17 acres of land. Depending on how things go, we might make another trip over to walk it again. We got some cheese and crackers to snack on and Dale got a rice cracker mix to appease his snack cravings 

Collectibles were at a nearby store to the market. The window is so busy, I hardly could see individual pieces

I wondered if they do Halloween here and I guess this store is my answer

We then headed through one of the parks near the market. It was called flagstaff gardens

I love these well cared for green spaces right in the middle of the business areas

And since spring is still just starting here, flowering bushes were putting on a show,

The park is a smaller one here. It is about 18 acres with tennis courts and play area. Bisected with pleasant walkways 

There are statues, this one is called temptation. Teasing any cat is bad form, but this one could do some damage if angered

The irises were just starting to peak out and show their colors

Next it was lunch time, those critters with us today were impressed with the Korean BBQ Dale choose

We were able to eat our fill. We were told we had 90 minutes to be at our table and there was a surcharge if we took more food than we ate. This meant smaller servings and multiple times cooking

I had been craving cupcakes for several day now and they had these cute mini cupcakes as part of the dessert offering.  The guys felt it was just their size. Me, I had more than one☺️

The next couple of art and bridges are from the river walk we took after lunch. The art is first and then some of the cool pictures of buildings. This mosaic is a tribute on their museum of arts building on the south side of the Yarra river

The circus was housed there from 1858-1953 when the building burned down.

There was a lot of abstract style art on the river walk 

Thus one is so in an abstract style, a little to strange for my taste

This is one of the pedestrian bridges across this area of the Yarra River  by the CBD

I sometimes wonder  how functional some of these building are inside. They are cool to look for sure

This building was originally the stream ship terminal headquarters 

This is St Paul’s cathedral 

We were across the street and it was starting to rain, so I did not go check on what this building is/was but I liked the stout feel of it

This building was the former Levicks and Piper warehouse built in 1859

Again the rain stopped me from checking on what these buildings were

This is not an old building, but it is a fun looking from across the River and it is the Melbourne aquarium 

Though this building is now a realtors, you can barely make out that at one time it was something to do with paper. The building next to it has been torn down, but it is still standing tall.

After this the rain went from light to “ let’s get soaked” type of downpour. We ducked into a jewelry store that we had a coupon to and found some beautiful pieces, so I guess you could say this was a pricey rain, but we did have a 50% off coupon so that made them not too bad.

After that we decided to get out of our wet clothes and have some dinner at the hotel.

Night has come and the city lights are sparkling outside of our hotel window. As we were upgraded to a two room suite, this is a good place to spend a rainy evening.