2 - 5 Melbourne City, Victoria Market, Trams, Queen Victoria Gardens

 Melbourne City tours - on our own.  Today we took the Viking shuttle into town and explored on foot.  Its nice to be free and not always guided in new places.  The shuttle dropped us off at the Eureka tower, one of the 17 skyscrapers.  The tower is 975 feet tall, visitors can ride to the 88th floor for about $40.  At one time it was the largest residential tower in the southern hemisphere.  This is the view of the city  from the ship.  Eureka tower is in the center, the 2nd highest scraper in this photo.  Our guides yesterday kept referring to it as the blue tower.  It doesn't look blue to me.

                                            The Yarra River flows through downtown. Yesterday on the drive to the Wildlife Sanctuary we were in the Yarra Valley, following the Yarra River.  Two weeks ago the area (outside the city) was flooded in the Yarra River valley.  Our original excursion for Melbourne was a train ride into the countryside.  But the floods caused so much damage to the tracks  that our train ride excursion was cancelled.  Everything has dried out nicely.

Melbourne has an extensive tram system downtown.  Their roads were exceptionally wide, leaving plenty of room for the trams in the center lanes of the roads.  The trams were converted to all electric a few years ago.  Within the green zone, the tram rides are free.  We covered a lot more ground with the aid of the trams, easy on easy off.

Our first tram ride was only one block long because I saw Walker's Doughnuts.  It's not like I was hungry but it looked like an important historical location.  I had  a 'nutella cheesecake' doughnut, Phil had doughtnut called 'french toast stuffed with caramel sauce'. After the sugar load we were ready to continue exploring.  We found a souvenior shop just down from Walker's we bought some fun stuff and more importantly got ideas about where to explore.  The shop employees suggested Victoria Market, so that's where we went next.  Back on the tram for about 8 blocks.

Victoria market is the largest of its kind in this half of the world.  It has a formal looking entrance, inside are speciality shops, fruit and vegetable stands (farmers market like), fresh meat and fish markets,  crafts, and a flea market section.

                                        

Aren't these little guys cute?  I couldn't resist taking their picture.  They were not for sale.

                    I did buy a new hat.  Even though its made in China I really do like it.

After the crowds at the market we wanted a little quiet.  Back on the tram to get close to the gardens.  We were delayed about five minutes as a crowd of protestors marched up the street.  One of their signs read "Main stream media is lying."  They did get our attention, but who knows what they were really protesting???   T

There were several choices in gardens all within walking distance. Fitzroy, Royal Botanical, Olympic  Parks. The Royal Botanical Gardens were the highest rated, even though Fitzroy is probably better known. So to the Royal Gardens we went.

This orange structure looked like a drooping sunflower head.  The area under the orange was marked off with tape.  There were New Year's Eve celebration preparations going on in the park: portable lights, portable johns, stages being set up, many areas were marked off.  

                                    

Part of the tram system was shutting down at 3pm as they start blocking off some streets.  We were hungry so we headed back to the ship just in time to have lunch at the World Cafe.  We made it with 20 minutes to spare. They stopped serving at 2:45 today, a little later than normal     

All on board is 10 pm tonight.  This ship sails at 11pm.  We just might get to see the midnight Melbourne fireworks tonight.  A steward says there will be fireworks all along the coastline.  Melbourne will set off early fireworks at 9:30 (in addition to those at midnight), we'll see those for sure. 

Viking has started the NYE celebrations (its only 4:30pm) with Viking Royales and appetizers. I'd better hurry and finish this blog!  

Happy New Year!!!!!!!