I recently made a weekend dash to Melbourne. These are the activities I prioritised over spending time with my husband.
Jude and I celebrated our four-year wedding anniversary a few weeks back, and decided we’d mark the occasion by taking a romantic trip to Melbourne. Definitely one of the worst ideas we’ve ever had.
The problem when you live in a city for an extended period of time, is it’s no longer a holiday destination but a place full of friends you want to catch up with and things you miss doing. So instead of being two buckets of love, we found ourselves splitting up*, so we could catch up with friends and conquer our individual to-do lists.
* Not divorce-getting, splitting up.
For me, these are the activities you can’t come to Melbourne and not do:
1. Shopping
Sorry Jude but Melbourne Emporium pulls rank.
I’ve decided there’s actual no point shopping in Sydney (just like there’s no point owning shorts in Melbourne). Because any fashion-horse knows that the best shopping in the land is done in Melbourne. The stores are beautifully-presented, and don’t resemble a Chinese flea market. There’s clothing stock beyond yoga pants and tees. And the stores are actually open beyond 5:01pm.
A visit to Melbourne without a shopping splurge would just be an abomination. If you’re interested, these are my favourite places to go shopping in this well-clothed city.
2. A visit to Milk the Cow
Ok I’ll admit, my obsession with Milk the Cow is on the extreme end of crazy. I just love their wine and cheese matchmaking soooooo much. Clearly the MAFS experts don’t play a part because it’s perfection. And before you say it, Sydney’s Stinking Bishops just isn’t the same.
Jude was under strict advice that he could only attend my Milk the Cow visitation if he was going to 100% get into the experience. I wanted him as excited as a six-year-old on Christmas Day. Otherwise, I was more than happy to go on my own. He did his best.
Milk the Cow has two locations: one in St Kilda, one in Carlton. You can read all about my love of the cheese bar here.
Four boutique, funky, cutting-edge natural wines paired with four artisanal cheeses
3. Venture into Melbourne’s inner suburbs
Melbourne is just so effortlessly cool, isn’t it? It’s gritty, sophisticated and a lot of fun. And no where else is this quite on show like it is in the inner suburbs of Melbourne: Collingwood, Carlton, Fitzroy, Richmond, Prahran, Windsor – all great places to spend some time.
As much as I love visiting our old stomping ground of Chapel Street (gee-whiz that was a fun life), on this trip I just happened to spend a whole heap of time in Richmond – and I loved it. Things kicked off with dinner at Future Future – ”a Japanese restaurant filtered through Melbourne eyes”, which means you know it’s going to be good, and god it was. Melbourne just does food really, really well.
It also does bars really, really well. I happily whiled away some hours in the courtyard of Richmond’s new gastro pub Harlow.
How Future Future does kingfish
4. Drink good coffee
Visiting Melbourne I realised I’d forgotten what good coffee tastes like. Melbourne coffee is just from another planet. Even coffee from places that as a Melburnian I would never have slunk so low as to get coffee from now tastes like liquid velvet.
I guess that’s why they say you’re not a Melburnian until you argue with a stranger over where to find the best coffee. When I was that person, these were the places I’d take into battle.
Thanks a latte Melbourne
5. Brunch, Melbourne-style
Breakfast in Melbourne is also on a different galactic wave. Here brunching is an Olympic sport; a lesson in brunch art, interior design and how to navigate dangerously long wait times.
Higher Ground Melbourne is one of my favourite brunch destinations to visit in the city. A former powerstation with soaring ceilings, the space is jaw-dropping beautiful, as are the breakfast dishes. Creative, clever and colourful.
Not that this picture is from there…
Crush avocado at Barry in Northcote – a cool cafe, filled with cool people
6. Dinner at Supernormal
For our anniversary dinner, we headed back to one of our all-time fav restaurants while living in this cool city – Supernormal. This lunch-dinner restaurant on Flinders Lane serves pan-Asian share plates, and just personifies Melbourne: it’s fun and unpretentious, has a great buzzy atmosphere and it’s delicious. I very much recommend getting here early and doing the $69pp banquet menu, or at the very least trying the lobster rolls and peanut butter parfait.
Prawn and chicken dumplings, with chilli and vinegar sauce – oh my!
Unfortunately, our Supernormal experience also personified our romantic weekend away. We both had succumbed to plane sickness and sat at dinner in silence, suffering through our sore throats and runny noses. It was like a modern love story. I guess there’s always our fifth wedding anniversary.
But, romance aside, we still had a fandangly good four days in Melbourne.
