The start of my Melbourne journey

11th April

I guess I was too excited to sleep and woke up way before my alarm rang. We would be meeting the rest of the guys (the Djs, Joyce from Tourism Australia and Tony Poletto from Tourism Victoria) at 12 for lunch at this exciting place called Taxi Dining Room at Federation Square. I was wowed by the interior of the restaurant coz the ambience was really nice and soothing (plus there were cute waiters to look out for! =). The food was fabulous too. I had the specialties for entrée and main course, crayfish salad with mango puree and beef respectively. The crayfish tasted so fresh and yummy while the beef was oozing with juice. Plus, a great drink called lemon lime and bitters(?) as recommended by the DJs was a great companion with the food. Gosh…my first day in Melbourne and I was falling in love with her food already.















With such delicious entrée and main, I could guess that the dessert would amaze me further ( and I purposely saved some space in my stomach for it coz I just loved sweet stuff!) And I was not disappointed at all. I ordered my favourite cheesecake (it was cheesecake with almond crumble and strawberry 2 ways) and it totally swept me off my feet. We gotta rushed as we still needed to do the Hidden Secrets tour and the DJs had to do their broadcasting. I still managed to scrape clean the dessert dish (and didn’t mind another one actually) before we left. It was a pity that Rod, one of the DJs with us had to leave earlier for a bicycle tour coz he had just missed out on such wonderful dessert!



We met our tour leader, Alix, a pretty young lady and went on our next adventure. She brought us to several lanes like Collin Street and Manchester Lane where there were different shopping arcades that sold unique items with a taste of Melbourne’s unique factor. Shops like Kinki Gerlinki, Body and Shag amazed me with their range of items in the shops. And I must said that the décors of the shops were also unique and attractive. I realized that the shops closed rather early, like around 5pm to 6pm (not really for a late night creature like me who become more alive at night..haha). After the tour, we stopped by KoKo Black Chocolate for a drink. The iced chocolate mocha was really nice, with the yummy KoKo chocolate and vanilla ice-creams…I just loved it!


After a while, the rest of the crew needed to leave first to prepare for the broadcasting later, so Juliet and I hanged around for a while more before we explored around and tried to find some souvenirs. We stopped by a shop, Westmister which sold some really cute stuff and I bought an adorable toy while Juliet bought some crystal butterflies for her friends. After that, we were in need for a washroom. I realized that the lady had actually overcharged me as the toy was supposed to cost $7.95 after a discount from $14.95 but she charged me at the original price so I quickly went back. Luckily the lady apologized and returned me the extra $7. I noticed that there was a cute sweet shop just next to it so I popped in. This shop, Suga had cute lollipops and candies and I believed I had read about this shop somewhere. I bought 2 bottles for my friends and myself while Juliet bought lollipops for her friends. We headed back to the hotel after that as we would be picked up by Tony and he would bring us to Eureka Skydeck 88, where the Djs were doing their broadcasting. We got a bit lost, rather embarrassed to say even though the streets were arranged in a grid pattern (cute right?) and managed to find our way with the help of some friendly Australians. After putting down our stuff and freshening up ourselves, we went downstairs to meet Tony.


Eureka Skydeck 88 was the tallest residential building in Melbourne and the Southern Hemisphere. And the view was simply spectacular. Everything seemed so tiny all of the sudden. While waiting for our turn to do the broadcasting, we explored around. There was this helpful lady, Tina who brought us around introduced us to The Edge, which was this interesting cubicle which could hold about 12 people (approx 2.5 tonnes?) that would move out of the building and the people on board would be in mid-air inside this glass container. Even the bottom was glass so we were required to put disposable blue caps over our footwear to prevent any scratches on the glass.


I felt like I was in a huge magician box as the cubicle slowly edged out of the building and we could not see our surroundings. Then at once, the glasses were cleared (like those magicians who unveiled their magic box at once) and we could see the spectacular view in front and below us. For someone who was rather afraid of heights, surprisingly, I did not feel any fear at that moment as standing right there, right at that moment with such an amazing bird view of Melbourne, one could only feel like in heaven. We even posed for pictures which we later got 2 copies as souvenirs (a really great thanks to the people from Eureka Skydeck!). After that interesting moment, we went for the broadcast with the Djs and had a fun time with naughty conversations exchanged. Juliet and I continued exploring the deck and confirmed that Melbourne was truly a beautiful city with so many interesting stuff for us first-timers to discover.


After bidding farewells to the wonderful people, Tony dropped us back at the hotel. Even though it was late night shopping on Fridays, it was already 8plus when we left the building so I doubted that we could shop for long, plus I was really tired as I only slept 3 hours the night before. I spent the rest of the night doing write-ups for my blog. And when I weighed myself, I was really freaked out. Coz after such a sumptuous and beautiful lunch (I was rather full from it and did not eat dinner) and I did grab some small bites during broadcast, I could not believe when I stepped onto the weighing machine and it showed 46kg!! I even lost 2kg!! (what the?!?!)I was getting further away from my dream weight of 55kg (it’s for real). Gosh…where had all the wonderful food that I consumed for the day disappeared to? And I thought I could gain some weight from this trip to save myself from my mum’s nagging for being too skinny. Shit…