Melbourne - Friends, family, and a tour of food and drink

Melbourne

Our main plan for Melbourne was to eat, drink and socialise. We certainly achieved that. I mentioned that the Fitzroy area we were staying in was great for places to go out, and we valiantly ploughed our way through many of the options.

And when we needed an occasional respite, there were some lovely independent shops around, and a nice little market too.

Melbourne

It was an interesting place, as whilst it was certainly trendy - lots of hipster beards and man-buns - it wasn't that achingly hip, 'don't even try to get in if you aren't wearing the right uniform', kind of area, that personally I (a) don't meet the criteria, and (b) couldn't stand to go out in even if I did. It actually has a really relaxed and friendly feeling to it, much like most of the areas that we visited in fact. We loved it.

Melbourne

The area has developed a shabby look, with lots of dishevelled looking buildings, and graffiti. We heard that some of the establishments here have paid a lot of money to achieve just that right level of peeling paintwork, and the graffiti is not that awful tagging, but really rather impressive street art. We did wonder slightly about the syringes that we saw on the ground, but soon realised that the only drug at work here was sugar, as these were the syringes used to fill your designer doughnuts with your flavouring of choice.

Melbourne

Not that the look of the place went down too well with my aunt. While we were here, we met up with one of my dad's sisters, who emigrated to Australia around thirty odd years ago. I had never met her, so it was nice to have the chance to do so while we were here.

She and her husband collected us at our 'home' and were quite concerned that we were staying in such a bad area. We did reassure her that it isn't really like that, as did her daughter later, but I'm not sure she was convinced.

Chandon Winery, Melbourne

They drove us out to Mount Dandenong, where we were able to take in the view of the city, and have lunch, at a restaurant called Skyhigh. The food was plentiful, and the views were excellent. After lunch, we popped in to Chandon Winery for a taste of their wines, and then went out to their home, where we saw a resident kookaburra pop over for dinner. It was lovely to meet another branch of the family, and to see another side of Melbourne.

Kookaburra, Melbourne

Melbourne

Melbourne

Back in the city, the main hub in Fitzroy is Brunswick Street. We rather liked The Fitz, for a good lunch or brunch, and we couldn't resist trying out The Shifty Chevre, which as you might guess from the name, specialises in cheese. It is a great place for a cheese platter snack, especially if you come when one of their offers is on, such as when the sparkling wine is half price. However the main reason we came was to check out the cheesy cocktails. Honestly, I can't say that they were my favourite drinks, and I'm not really convinced of the merits of putting cheese in your drink as opposed to with it, but it was fun to try.

I had no complaints about the cocktails in two of the other establishments in the street though. The Black Pearl and The Alchemist were both excellent. the lists were interesting and varied, the staff were friendly, helpful and - most importantly - made wonderful cocktails. And whilst cocktails are rarely cheap, I thought that for drinks of this standard, in a city like Melbourne, they weren't too badly priced. I would highly recommend both places.

Melbourne

Somewhere else I would definitely recommend, is a restaurant called Charcoal Lane, in Gertrude Street. This place is a bit on the fancier side, but the food is great. It is a social enterprise project, that gives disadvantaged young people, many of whom are Aboriginal, a chance to have a fresh start and training, either in the kitchen or front of house.

The food is different too, with a focus on bush food, with options such as emu and wallaby, and other ingredients like lemon myrtle, wattleseed, rosella flower and muntrie berries.

A couple of streets over, technically in Collingwood rather than Fitzroy I think, is another road to check out - Smith Street. There is a huge range of eateries and bars here. We found a place that specialised in meatballs, which made a change, but perhaps wasn't as good as we'd have liked.

Melbourne

There was a rather nice wine bar called Smithward, which had only recently opened, and did a rather nice raclette. The owner was very interesting to chat to, and was taking the unusual approach of only stocking wines that he and his wife had tried at the winery in question.

Thankfully they have been to some nice wineries. And we really liked MJR TOM, which had friendly staff, good cocktails, and very tasty bomba and empanaditas.

Melbourne

We popped along to Carlton, where we caught up on a couple of films at the cinema, and we spent a lot of time in Melbourne just walking around some of these close by neighbourhoods, and taking in the city, stopping for refreshment and people watching, and it was an excellent place for that. One of the things that we liked about the look of Melbourne, was the lovely old buildings with beautiful ironwork.

Our friend who picked us up when we arrived lives in Brunswick, so we had a good look around there too, finding some great bars, and a lovely tapas and salsa place, that may have been Basco's but I forgot to write any of the names down so I'm not sure. We also met up with her and some other friends at Federation Wharf in the CBD. We just about made it safely through Federation Square, despite the best efforts of the local zombie wannabees.

One last place I should mention, just for the sheer wackiness of it, is a cocktail bar that was recommended to us by a number of people. It is called Madame Brussells, and it is set up like a lawn tennis club. The staff are dressed in tennis whites, there is fake grass on the floor and everything is just a little bit camp and kitsch. To be honest, I wouldn't recommend it on either price or quality of the drinks, but it is amusing to stop off for a pitcher on the terrace.

Overall, we really liked Melbourne. It was a city that we could easily imagine living in for a while, far more so than Sydney.

Melbourne

Melbourne

Melbourne

Melbourne

Melbourne

Melbourne

Melbourne

Melbourne

Melbourne

Melbourne

Miami design and graffiti

From St Pete we took the bus down to Miami.  We are quite used to long bus journeys, so at just over seven hours this one would have been fine, had it not been for one woman who managed to spend the entire six hours that she was one the bus speaking loudly on her phone in Spanish.

Goodness knows who she was talking to for that long, but it was most irritating.  We all we relieved when she got off, only to find another woman start up.  Thankfully she only spoke for part of the remaining hour.


Once in Miami, we had another Airbnb to stay at. No coffins this time, but they did have a dog that liked to play, a couple of mostly friendly cats, and some slightly crazy chickens.

 

 

We had thought that we would do the Everglades while in Miami, but in the end we didn't. We discovered that although there is a lot of talk about the importance of the environment in connection with the Everglades National Park, there is no way of getting there on public transport - everyone either has to drive themselves or arrange an expensive private transfer.

 

 

The one alternative is to go on an organised tour. We considered that, but they just give you a short trip on a large and environmentally unfriendly airboat, and then take you to gator land to watch them wrestling with the alligators. That wasn't really what we wanted, so we decided to leave the Everglades to a time when we can come back and do it more as we would want to.

One of the things we did do, was take a walk around the design district and the Wynwood area. The design district was OK, but unless you have a big budget, you're not going to find too much to take home with you.

We did find a place serving good beers and pizzas though.
 

We also wandered amongst the warehouses of the Wynwood area. I know that that this sounds a bit strange, but in fact this is where the graffiti artists have come to do their thing. And they do it on a very large scale, often taking up a whole wall.
 

A few of the designs were mediocre or not to our taste, but most were excellent. I especially liked the black and white ones I think, though the Roy Lichtenstein inspired one was amusing too.

Curitiba

From Iguassu we took our last internal flight to Curitiba.  The main reason for coming here was to get the Serra Verde train, but we will come back to that later.  We decided to spend a few days here as part of our relaxed final month.

Not really being a backpacker destination, we were in a budget hotel again, and  after some of our recent experiences were a little nervous.  However there was no need, as the place was fine, as long as you didn't make the mistake of getting laundry done; it was extortionate.  All beautifully pressed and folded or hung on hangers, but well beyond our normal budget.

Although the hotel website said that they speak English as well as Portuguese, it was quickly evident that no one did, so our efforts in very basic Portuguese mixed with some Spanish were tested to and beyond their limits.  However we got by, and in particular the guys on at night got quite used to us and seemed pleased with our efforts and happy to try to help with a few mimes.

Curitiba itself is quite a simple but pleasant city, with a pedestrianised shopping area and a number of old churches and decorative buildings.

They seem to be pretty proud of their buses here, as they feature them on their tourist postcards.  Personally I wasn't especially taken with them, but then I am a fan of the old London Routemasters.  I was however quite impressed with their bus shelters; modern, cylindrical, metal and glass constructions with rising platforms for access for wheelchairs and buggies etc.

Rather less modern was the old cobbled section of town, conveniently near to our hotel, which now houses a number of decent places to eat.  Our favourite was a place that was beautifully decorated and declared itself to the the worlds best burgers.  We figured this was a big claim, and that we should try it out. After some initial fumbling, we managed to order what we wanted, including my usual instructions about leaving out half the planned contents because I don't like them.

Then we got a visit from the manager.  For a minute we wondered what was wrong, but it soon became clear that he was probably the only person who spoke English, and being told there were English speakers in, he had come over to make sure everything was OK.  He popped over frequently during the meal, and we must have got some of the best service that evening.  We figured the other guests must have thought we were somehow important from all the attention given to us. And what of the burgers.  Well, we were impressed.  Best in the world - not sure, there are a lot more to taste yet elsewhere, but certainly they were very good and far surpassed any that we have had anywhere else in South America.
We also tried out another buffet place, which was also incredibly cheap.  Nic has decided that he quite likes Brazil I think. One other place that we ate was a German style restaurant, where we had some great pork with red cabbage, spaetzle and apple purée.  However we were disappointed to have our first experience of being told we couldn't stay much longer, especially given that the reason we were hanging around was that it was tipping down with rain.  They didn't get a tip!

Aside from the bus stops and the food though, there were two other things that I rather liked in Curitiba.  The first were the trees.  There were lots of diferent types that looked good, but my favourites were some that had very tall trunks and then bowl shaped branches at the top.  They looked very structural and quite arty.  Others obviously agree as they have been nicely depicted in some wall art in the city.

Highrise graffiti

And the other thing that intrigued me was the graffiti.  Not for its aesthetic value or originality, as neither were strong; it was mostly just a lot of repetitive tags or slogans.  What captured my attention was its placement.  For some reason there seems to be an urge to put the graffiti at the top of tall buildings.  Some you could see that they would do by hanging over the edge of a building or out of a window, but other efforts must surely have involved some kind of mechanical or climbing system, or else some real death defying stunts to achieve.