Geelong - Melbourne

We used to visit Melbourne pretty regularly, but with one thing and another we've had a very big break since our last visit - almost 6 years to be exact. Our last visit was to attend James W.'s 50th birthday party in Fitzroy in March 2018.

So with our extra few days here in Geelong we decided to take advantage of the proximity and catch a train into Melbourne city for the day (on Thursday). We enjoyed the train ride - clean, uncrowded and pretty quick - only an hour from South Geelong Station into the huge Southern Cross Station at Docklands. Under instruction from Pete we caught a FREE tram in Collins Street from there and in no time at all we were in the centre of the city!

We both wanted to check out some familiar sites. First stop was a Melbourne coffee in one of the coffee shops on Degraves Lane. It was good but nowhere near as memorable as our early days in Melbourne when getting a great coffee in a hipster city cafe was a bit of a novelty for us unsophisticated Canberrans.

We wandered around Melbourne's beautiful inner city arcades, admiring the architecture, ...... including the Royal Arcade off Bourke Street .....

 

and The Block .........

We had lunch at an old favourite - Young and Jackson on Flinders Street, along with many other Melbournites of a similar vintage to us.

Such a Melbourne icon over the road - Flinders Street Station. 

I did some shopping in the afternoon: Alpha 60, Et Al, The Emporium etc, and managed to carry all the parcels back with us on that excellent Geelong train service.

Friday night we enjoyed a "date night" dinner with Ros and Pete at the Gold Diggers Arms Hotel in Newtown. We never fail to be impressed with the quality of food offerings and the range of friendly, character filled venues in Geelong!

We enjoyed our third visit to our fave Born and Bread Bakehouse yesterday morning in Pakington St. The coffee is great there - but it is the baked goodies (pretzels yum!) that are truly unique. We've walked to Born and Bread three different ways now but yesterday we showed Pete the interesting new creative precinct on Rutland Street on the walk back to the Barwon River (and then home).

After our morning walk we set out for Aireys Inlet, a beautiful beach side town on the Surf Coast  around 45klms SW of Geelong. Ros and Pete had worked out a very scenic walk for us once we got there, taking us all around the iconic Split Point Lighthouse (of ABC TV Round the Twist fame)........

... and giving us beautiful views of this amazing coastline facing out to Bass Strait.  This view of Eagle Rock from the lighthouse lookout was very popular (as a selfie backdrop) with all the visiting Instagrammers.

This was the view looking northwards towards Anglesea and Bells Beach..........

... and the view back to the lighthouse from Land's End Lookout.

We were rewarded at the end of our walk with a lovely lunch at Aireys Pub & Salt Brewery.

And we finished off another wonderful day and our bonus extra days' stay with Ros and Pete with another AMAZING meal - huge SA prawns and Coffin Bay oysters purchased fresh on the way home from the Seafood Suppliers right next to the Barwon Heads Airport.

Its been a wonderful stay - and now we are so excited about our next catch up with this lovely pair - in LONDON!! (yes, in May this year!)