Australia Part 15: Melbourne Zoo and la Porchetta at Queen Victoria Market

Hubby and I finally managed to find the Melbourne Zoo. We checked out from our hotel early and proceeded directly to Melbourne Zoo.



We had breakfast amongst the Kangaroos. We still had some leftover ham, cheese, bread and fruits from the hotel fridge and I brought it with me. It was the most fun breakfast ever :-)



If you love animals, like we do, don't miss out on going to Melbourne Zoo. You will enjoy spending the whole day there, although we didn't have that luxury because we had a flight to New Castle in the afternoon. Anyway, these are just some of the animals that we saw. It was absolutely worth it to go and have a visit.

The most fun I had was going to the aviary. The aviary was huge and very ideal for avian "lifestyle". There are streams inside, grasses, trees and shrubs. The aviary alone is worth the trip.

The zoo also provides party areas that you can rent for the day. Vey ideal for Children's parties and such.



We had so little time left for lunch before our flight, we made a beeline to La Porchetta at Queen Victoria Market for a quick lunch of La Porchetta Pizza, caesar's Salad, hot chocolate and Ice cream. The pizza was way too rich, a sprinkling of bell peppers would have made it better :-)

Autralia Part 13: National Gallery of Victoria

The weather wasn't cooperating that day. When I left our hotel, it was cloudy and windy. I decided to take the Nikon and leave the tripod at the hotel, lest I got caught in a storm. I saw on the news that Sydney was having torrential rain and it looked like Melbourne will get some rain showers as well.

My first stop was National Gallery of Victoria. The gallery has a very iconic and impressive door made of glass with cascading water.





The gallery is free. You can spend the whole day there if you love the arts. The gallery holds an impressive collection of African, Egyptian, Roman artifacts. Here are some of things that I saw there that fascinated me:

After the museum, I saw the Free Hop on Hop Off Melbourne City Tourist Bus in front and decided to hitch a ride and go around Melbourne. The bus has 13 stops in various tourist attractions within Melbourne. For more information, click here.

It was close to lunch time and the much-needed rain was pouring with all its might. I took shelter at the Queen Victoria Market and had a slice of pizza and warm cappuccino at Market Lane Cafe:





After that, I proceeded to Cole's, one of Australia's major supermarkets (the other is Woolworth's) and bought some fruits for hubby. The strawberries in Australia are the best. It's like biting into sugar cubes. They're so sweet and succulent! The photo I have here are just the small ones, which are equally sweet as their large counterparts. Yummy!