We rose early to get breakfast before our 8:30am tour of the city.
- Royal Botanic Gardens Victoria & Shrine of Remembrance (Included)
- Duration: 4 hours, 8:30 AM
- Horticultural Works of Art and National Monument to Service and Sacrifice
- Explore two of Melbourne’s most important sights and admire the city’s beauty, culture and history. You will visit the Royal Botanic Gardens Victoria, a striking green oasis in the heart of Melbourne. Covering 38 hectares, it features more than 31 collections of plants presented as living works of art. Take a guided tour, then enjoy free time to explore on your own. Cross the street to pay your respects at the revered Shrine of Remembrance, one of the city’s most stunning landmarks. Discover the real-life stories of Australians in wartime and view breathtaking vistas of the memorial gardens and the city. Afterward, set out on a scenic drive through Melbourne. Pass magnificent buildings, such as the fortress-like Old Treasury Building and Parliament House, and the marvelous string of High Victorian Gothic buildings along Collins Street while en route to your ship.
We were in the third of I don’t know how many Viking buses setting out for the 8:30am excursion. They said something like 550 people signed up for this free tour of Melbourne with time slots through most of the day, but at 40 people per bus that meant at least 14 busloads through the day. I suspect more.
In any case, our tour was led by an amiable Australian fellow whose name I’ve already forgotten. We’ll say Ken. He and the driver led showed us a bit of St. Kilda, the beach suburb near our ship’s dock, then around Albert Park Lake and Sports Grounds, a huge recreational area for nearly any sport imaginable. This will be the site of the Australian Grand Prix in a few weeks and we actually drove the bus on part of the raceway past some of the many grandstands being erected.
We went to the Royal Botanic Gardens and stopped for a 45-minute walking tour. Our guide was an older woman volunteer who knew quite a lot about the plants but also seemed to forget some basic things. She also huffed and puffed into her headset microphone as she walked which was a bit disconcerting. This was the first tour where we were all using portable ear pieces so we could all hear her labors. She managed to show us a few highlights of the garden, navigating us around several other clots of Viking tour groups before leading us back the way we came to the visitor center. It was nice to see a bit of the garden but I think it would have been nicer to spend an hour or two on our own, maybe with an audio guide.
We reconvened and headed across the street to the Shrine of Remembrance, an imposing edifice that also houses a museum. Ken told us a bit about the building and another briefing on Gallipoli before letting us loose in the museum for 20 minutes which was really not nearly enough to have a serious look at anything. But we had a schedule to keep.
It was back on the bus to have a drive through Melbourne’s Sports Precinct along the Yarra River, including the tennis facility for the Australian Open and the Melbourne Cricket Ground. Ken managed to not mention that Taylor Swift had just held three sold-out concerts there the week before for more than 90,000 each night. Our shuttle driver the day before had been more impressed by the Swiftie takeover of the city the previous week…Ken seemed more interested in the Australian Open and the Grand Prix.
Ken gave us the option of leaving the tour at Queen Victoria Market which we and a few others did. We had a mission to find our opal store from the day before to get some earrings for Allie and also some Uggs slippers. It was also nearing lunchtime and somehow we were getting hungry.
Barb and I wandered a bit aimlessly through the impressive collection of food, grocery and knick knack stalls. I thought we were looking for a place to eat but Barb seemed to think otherwise. We finally decided to head to the opal store but along the way came across an interesting shop making Turkish borek and gozleme. I had never had either but went in and came out with a spicy lamb and cheese borek. We watched the woman in the window make cheese and spinach gozleme while I enjoyed my borek. That did the trick for my lunch.
We found the jewelry store but it was closed. We went around the corner to its sister store which fortunately was open and were able to make our purchase after some minor haggling on the price. We didn’t really know what a good price would be for these earrings but the job was done and we left happy. Barb chose some pink Uggs slippers for Allie that may turn out to be Barb’s after all. Time will tell.
We wandered onward in the general direction of our shuttle bus back to the ship. Downtown Melbourne continued to be impressively bustling on a pleasant Saturday afternoon. I snapped a shot of the Flinders Street Station, the main train station and hub of Melbourne activity.
We made it back to the ship a little after 2pm. We could have lingered in town for an hour or two more but we were both tired and Barb wanted to get some lunch. It was also a chance to do a little more laundry.
Around 5pm I headed upstairs to watch the Queen Mary 2 depart. It was an impressively majestic process bringing hundreds of people to the decks of the two ships. There was a lot of waving back and forth. Barb reported one wag on our ship shouted “Excuse me, do you have any Grey Poupon?” We thought that was pretty clever but evidently some others tut-tutted. Stuffy bastards.
There was a band playing and a big party on one of the Queen’s pool decks. As the ship cleared the dock we heard the strains of “Sweet Caroline.” Bom bom bom. Plus a big toot of the Queen’s horn. It was quite a show.
I was surprised that we headed out, much more quietly, barely 10 minutes later. We trailed behind the Queen for hours through Port Phillip Bay and could still see her later that night. We were both headed to Sydney but according to the internet she would arrive a day after us though she had no other scheduled stops. Cruise itineraries and navigational logistics are a mystery to me (and it turned out the internet was wrong…as I need to be reminded it can be).
We had dinner with Karen and Barb at The Chef’s Table. The menu was another Asian theme, this time allegedly from south China, though the dishes were barely recognizable as Chinese to me. They were tasty but filtered through the lens of a European chef for the sake of geriatric American palates. It was all too spicy for Barb anyway. Everyone liked the desert, though.
The astronomer, Alan Wright, held a star gazing session at 10:15pm and this time I made it. There were clear skies and a full moon which was pretty but the light washed out the Milky Way and many of the constellations Alan wanted to show us. We did have an excellent view of the Southern Cross and I finally figured out which four stars were the right ones – it was much smaller than I expected. The two “pointer stars” seem more prominent (one is Alpha Centauri, our nearest neighbor) and honestly I could more readily imagine a larger constellation called the Southern Uterus but I guess other people don’t see it that way. I was pleasantly surprised that my iPhone did a pretty good job of photographing the night sky. I got snaps of the Southern Cross, Orion and tried to get one of the Queen Mary 2 in the distance but that photo didn’t come out well enough to include.
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