A weekend in Melbourne? It’s never long enough. As with any hometown, it’s a place filled with old friends and heavy with memories and associations. I live in Sydney now – but each time I return to Melbourne I not only get nostalgic for the past, but excited for what the city continues to become.
Melbourne reminds me of a glorious old house with rooms inside rooms inside rooms. Each new visit, a new door is opened – and behind it might be a daring restaurant, a park I hadn’t visited, a bar down a laneway I’d walked past a million times but had never noticed.
A city is only as exciting and creative as its citizens and that bodes well for Melbourne. No one city in Australia has a monopoly on good conversation, but in Melbourne it has a tendency to flow. It could be something to do with where we meet; Melbourne’s best bits are tucked away. It’s a city of interiors – cafes, restaurants, bars, galleries, bookshops – places that are good for talking.
My Melbourne is mostly northside, a city of the back streets of Fitzroy, late nights on Smith Street, walks or bike rides in Clifton Hill, Sunday markets at the Abbotsford convent, the movies and dinner in Carlton, the bars of Gertrude Street.
But speak to someone who lives to the south, in Elwood or St Kilda or Prahran, and their Melbourne will be of bays and beaches, the nightclubs of Chapel Street, the avenues of Albert Park, the antique stores of Armadale and the boutiques of Brighton.
The one thing that unites north and south is a love of AFL – so if you are in Melbourne over a winter weekend, make sure you catch a game at the “G”.
I’m back regularly but these days need to confine my visits to a 48-hour period. So I’ll come in on a Friday afternoon on a Tiger flight and then get the Skybus ($18) to the old Spencer Street station, now known as Southern Cross station.
That road in from the airport, flat and long, industrial, usually under low grey skies, unimproved by the splashes of colour and distraction of the Jeff Kennett-era bridges, never hints at Melbourne’s rich hinterland. This is a place where you have to know where to go, because unlike Sydney the good stuff doesn’t just jump out at you.
Friday
3pm, coffee and book shops
After getting the Skybus from the airport , and buying a Myki transport card (from a 7/11 or newsagents), head into the CBD and grab a coffee. Melbourne’s caffeine scene is justifiably world-famous, and even the most modest looking sandwich bar will serve you a decent coffee.
I take a tram up from Southern Cross station to the Paris end of town at the corner of Bourke and Spring. I recommend a visit to the nearby Pellegrini’s at the top of Bourke Street – one of the first cafes to open in Melbourne (in 1951). The coffee here is a bit bitter but for a slice of Melbourne’s history it’s worth dropping into the family-run business and downing a cup from your seat at the counter. Pellegrini’s also serves up hearty Italian fare for around $20 for a plate of pasta.
In the vicinity is City Wine Shop. It’s a lovely bar at night, surrounded by a wall of bottles and low lighting and frequented by journos and political types from Spring Street (hence the need for dim lighting),but during the day they do a reliably smooth, almost creamy flat white. There’s also a selection of top shelf wines to take away.
After you’ve had your caffeine fix, visit two of Melbourne’s best bookstores just round the corner in Bourke Street. Hill of Content, a stately institution on the corner of Bourke and Exhibition, has very knowledgeable staff, while the more raffish Paperback, again on Bourke Street, is also worth exploring, particularly its bargain table. It’s impossible to leave either store without purchasing something.
4pm, check in, Sheraton Hotel
I stay at the new Sheraton at the Spring Street end of Little Collins Street, which is a tall, elegant hotel with a rooftop bar and spacious rooms with very comfortable beds.
There’s been a dearth of new hotels in the city for a number of years but now they are springing up all over the place. As well as the Crown Metropol, there’s the Langham, a rash of art hotels (the Cullen, the Olsen and the Blackman), the new Hilton Double Tree down by Flinders Street station and, opening late last year, the Sheraton at the top of Little Collins Street.
If you prefer something a little more homey, I can recommend the Brooklyn Arts Hotel in a converted Fitzroy terrace just off the uber-cool Gertrude Street.
6pm, pre-dinner drinks
Not far from the Sheraton, in the Meyers Place laneway, there are enough little bars for a mini-crawl before dinner.
The sort-of unnamed (ie there’s no sign) Meyers Place Bar is one of the original Melbourne laneway bars from the 1990s and still one of the best. It’s simple and unpretentious, with recycled timber furniture, good music and not-too-pricey drinks.
Nearby, if you feel like something fancier, a cocktail perhaps in luxe art deco surroundings, head next door to Lily Blacks.
8pm, dinner, Flinders Lane
A few years ago, Melbourne was hit by a new phenomenon: queues of people standing outside restaurants, sometimes for an hour or more, waiting for a table. The wave of super-hot, no-booking restaurants included Chin Chin (Asian fusion) and Mamasita (Mexican).
It’s to Chin Chin, I head, sans booking, for dinner. The wait is a mere 15 minutes this time and I am offered a seat at the bar in the meantime.
Dishes on offer (bring a heap of people with you and order everything to share) include crispy barramundi and green apple salad, salt and pepper soft-shell crusted crab and the twice cooked beef short rib. If you can’t decide, for $69 a person staff will give you a selection of their favourite dishes.
Other great restaurants in Flinders Lane (an absolute dining hot spot) include Coda, Supernormal and Cumulus Inc.
10pm, after-dinner and up late, Cherry Bar
There’s a load of bars in the city, and half the fun is wandering around and finding them yourself (look out for things like a dim light above the door, or a queue of people down a laneway lining up behind a bin) but why not walk up a few blocks to ACDC Lane and see some live music? Cherry Bar is an institution – unpretentious, gritty and dedicated to live music. It became famous for turning away Lady Gaga because it had a previous booking with a local band – and it is this loyalty to the Melbourne music scene, and dedication to providing a space for emerging bands, that has earned it so many die-hard fans.
It’s also a lot of fun, particularly late at night. The carpet is sticky, the characters by the bar in the cowboy hats can be kooky, the music is loud, but this is the real deal and there are gigs on every night.
Saturday
10am, brunch, Gertrude Street
The Sheraton does a great breakfast but if you feel like exploring outside your hotel, head towards Fitzroy where Brunswick and Gertrude streets have lots of great brunch options.
You don’t have to be vegan to enjoy Smith and Daughters – just be prepared to enjoy your latte with soy. The eggs with a Mexican twist are excellent.
For those lusting after bacon, De Clieu on Gertrude Street around the corner does a great Berkshire pork neck breakfast.
11am, a city walk
Head back towards the city for a spot of shopping. Melbourne has always had the edge over other Australian cities when it comes to shopping – you just have to walk through the Block and Royal arcades to see the exquisite detail in the mosaic tiles and ceiling details. The evergreen Hopetoun Tea Rooms in the Block Arcade is a great example of where Melbournites of yore (and still today) would take a break from their shopping at David Jones or Myer and enjoy a lavish cake or solid scone with a strong cup of tea.
For newer and flashier shopping try the refurbished GPO on the corner of Bourke and Elizabeth streets or Emporium at Melbourne Central, which opened last year and features local designers such as Scanlan and Theodore, Gorman, Godwin Charli, Arthur Galan, 124 Shoes, Mr Simple and Autonomy alongside international brands including Uniqlo.
2pm, AFL match at the MCG
Head over to the Melbourne Cricket Ground for an afternoon game. Any game. Nothing beats an afternoon walking to the MCG through leafy East Melbourne with thousands of others.
Even before they are named, Melbourne babies are swaddled in team colours. It’s more than a sport, it’s a tribe you belong to for life.
So pick a team, go to a game and barrack with the best of them.
6pm, rooftop bars
After the footy, right on dusk, it’s time to explore some of Melbourne’s famous rooftop bars. The city has some of the best this side of Manhattan; there’s even a new “camping” hotel on one rooftop (at Melbourne Central).
My favourite rooftops for a drink include Rooftop Bar (at Curtin House, which also houses the excellent Cookie and Toff), Siglo, the goddess of rooftop bars in the same building as the Supper Club and overlooking Parliament House, Goldilocks, the quirky Madame Brussels and Fitzroy’s Naked in the Sky.
8pm, dinner
If you’re on a budget, head to Chinatown for cheap dumplings at the legendary Shanghai Dumpling House, followed by a beer at Section 8 (shipping containers in a vacant lot) or, for a more upmarket but still affordable dumpling experience, head to the three-storey Hutong Dumpling Bar off Bourke Street.
If you have a bit more cash to splash, I suggest dinner at the fabulous Asian-inspired Supernormal (in Flinders Lane) followed by an after-dinner drink at Cumulus Up.
Sunday
5am, hot-air ballooning
It’s an early start (an hour before sunrise), but Melbourne and Canberra are the only two of Australia’s capitals to allow hot-air ballooning over the CBD, so it’s worth adding to your itinerary if your budget allows – it’s up to $470 per person.
When I lived in Melbourne, I would emerge bleary-eyed for an early shift and see a flotilla of hot-air balloons drift across the dawn sky.
Now I’m in one with around 10 others and it’s exhilarating. To look down over the MCG, to float above the office blocks and church spires, to see across to the beaches of Frankston and bays of St Kilda, where even the brown of the Yarra is sparkling in the kind morning light, is to see the city with new eyes.
And then there’s the peace of it. It’s so gentle and in the basket there’s a sense of stability. After an hour in the air, we land near the zoo with a small thud and a tinge of regret at being back on the ground.
Head back to your hotel for breakfast, or do as I did and join your fellow balloon travellers for breakfast and debrief in the dining room at the Pullman in East Melbourne.
11am, Royal Botanical Gardens, East Melbourne
Number plates in Victoria used to proclaim it as the “garden state”. Two of my favourite gardens are the Treasury Gardens on the city fringe and the adjoining Royal Botanical Gardens in East Melbourne.
They are lovely places to explore, run around (you often hear Melbourne people talk about running the ‘Tan’) or just take a newspaper or book, find a bench and relax in the quiet, green spaces.
12.30am, lunch, Le Jardin Tan
It’s appropriate your 48 hours in Melbourne should end with yet more food.
Shannon Bennett’s latest eatery, located at the Observatory Cafe at the Botanical Gardens, is a cafe and bar that reinterprets Vietnamese food as it was under the country’s French colonial rulers. All produce is sourced locally (as is Shannon Bennett’s way) from a property at Burnham Beeches.
