Sunday, September 21, 2008

Port Melbourne Tour

Last Saturday, we were planning to go to the Maritime Museum, but after enjoying a lazy morning drinking coffee and "vegging", it was too late to get to the museum before they closed. So, instead, we walked around our little town of Port Melbourne and decided to take some pictures for you all so you know where we live :) It was really sunny and actually too warm for the fleece jackets we were wearing!! Great news for us since we just went through our 2nd winter of the year!

The picture above is of our building - we live up on the 6th floor (of 9). There are four buildings in our apartment complex with a little courtyard in the middle. It's secured by locked doors that only open when your swipe your key. You can see the courtyard below.

This is looking down from at Bay Street from the stairs that lead out of our apartment complex.

The pics below are of Bay Street - the street we live on. The bus stop is right here on this street, so it's a pretty convenient way to get to work in the mornings. (Anthony and I have been able to ride into work together most mornings. He gets off one stop before me, so it works out perfectly!) Bay Street has everything we need: grocery stores, cafes, restaurants, a post office, lots of little shops, a cute wine store with free tastings on the weekends....what more could we need?

It was such a beautiful day! Lots of people out walking their dogs, playing in the sand with their kids, and flying kites.

The Spirit of Tasmania is a small cruise ship that sails to Tasmania every night from Port Melbourne. Someday we'd like to take it over to tour around Tasmania...probably once the weather gets a little nicer.


Yah for the first signs of SPRING!

This is the closest tram station is to our place. There are a bunch of restaurants along the water - the ones we've tried so far have been good.

Here's a short little video I took from a dock in the water. It's looking back on the street. We love Port Melbourne!


There are a lot of statues and historical monuments along the walkway by the water. There's also 2 lighthouses (1 in the water & 1 on land) that used to be used for navigation for ships coming into the port. If the beams were lined up, then they knew they were coming in straight. Very interesting. The lighthouses aren't really used for navigation anymore, but they do still light up at night.

There was a bit a breeze that day. When we got back to our house, we could see tons of sail boats out on the water. I love our little view of the bay :)

We've also attached a little map below so you can see where we live (it's the blue marker). For reference, it's about 3 kilometers (2 miles) from our apartment to downtown Melbourne.

Since we didn't make it to the museum on Saturday, we decided to get an earlier start and go visit it on Sunday. After wandering around for awhile looking for it, we came across a couple of parking attendants and asked them if they knew how to get there. They informed us that the museum was closed for renovations. Sad. We'll just have to try again later, I guess.

Instead, we decided to take the tram to St Kilda Beach area since we haven't been there yet. It was actually a pretty windy and cool day, but because I thought we were only going to the museum, I was in capris, flip-flops, and a short sleaved jacket. Of course, by the beach the winds were even stronger/colder! So, we didn't stay very long. I did get a little video of some kite surfers though!


St Kilda Beach Park is about 4 kilometers from our place in Port Melbourne and there's no convenient public transport between the two towns. So, we just decided to walk home. This really reinforced the bad choice of wardrobe on my part! My feet hurt for the next two days! But, we found a cute little coffee shop along the water about 1/2 way home, so we stopped and warmed up before finishing our journey. I'm definitely looking forward to going back with the appropriate shoes and warmer clothing though! :) Here's a little collage from the St Kilda trip.

We hope you all have a great week!

2 comments:

Jeff and Kim said...

Thanks for the tour! YAY for signs of spring. We have enjoyed fabulous weather this weekend. I had forgotten how much I loved to just tilt my face up to the sun and absorb it.
Anthony's travels sound interesting. I will keep you posted on European travels once they get underway!
Have a great week! Love ya!

Ronda said...

What a beautiful tour!!!! I really enjoy seeing pictures of where you all are "living out" your adventure! It looks SO pretty!
It was fun to hear from you...Thanks for your sweet comments! Love ya....Hope that you are having a GREAT day!