February 12, 2024

For our second day in Melbourne we had a tour planned off TripAdvisor. It is called Laneways of Melbourne and it was also offered off the ship but we were unable to sign up through the ship because it was full. The tour was at 10 am and our plan was to get off the boat and take the shuttle into town (we are 2.5 miles away from downtown Melbourne). The shuttle starts running at 9am so we thought we had plenty of time to amen a 10am tour. Unfortunately there was another cruise ship which docked early this am and it was disembarking so the dock was crowded and the shuttle bus was late due to all the congestion. We walked out of the port to take a taxi but no taxis were available because of all the passengers getting off the other ship and needing transport to various places. We started walking and tried to flag down some taxis but they all said they were on their way to pick up fares. We finally got an Uber but traffic was so bad that we were going to be 15 minutes late.

While we were in the Uber we got a call rom the tour guide and we explained that we were on our way but running late and he said not to worry about it because we were the only 2 on the tour and he would wait for us.

The tour started in St Pauls cathedral which was built in the 1800s and the people who built it only knew how to make ships so the ceiling looks like a ships hull.

The inside of St Paul’s cathedral.

The tour guide was very knowledgable about the history of Melbourne and gave us lots of info and lots of dates. None of which I remember. There are lots of alleys and streets that are shopping and eating streets. Some of the streets we went down are graffiti streets. Graffiti is legal on the buildings on these streets only and the artists are constantly painting over the graffiti and adding new. Our guide explained that you may see something you like 1 day but it will be gone the next. Some of the graffiti was really good.

Some of our favorites

One of the streets

Baby Yoda was one of our favorites and there was a car parked in front of it and our guide asked him to move so we could take a picture.

Not all the street art was painting some was actual art.

Us in front of the Melbourne graffiti art.

Graffiti on top of graffiti

The mouse with the parachute is actually a Banksy piece. Our guide said there were several Banskys at one point but they had all been painted over except for this one and one other.

A lot of the art work was really good.

Some of the buildings in town

The tour took over 3 hours and we saw a lot of the Melbourne. We had lunch in town with Kathy & Michael who did the ship’s version of the Laneways of Melbourne and saw different things than we did.

It was 97 degrees in Melbourne but there was a great breeze and it really was not bad. In the late afternoon we had some strong rain showers but they did not last long. We walked over 9 miles in Melbourne today.

Downtown Melbourne by the river.

The stadium where Taylor Swift will be playing On Feb 16th in Melbourne.

We took the shuttle back to the boat and had the shuttle bus driver drop us off on a street a few blocks over where we had seen a grocery store. We did a little shopping and then walked back to the boat. We made it back on board a little after 6pm. All on board was 9pm and we set sail at 10pm. It is very windy and lots of white caps. We are going 80 miles to Phillip ISland where we are anchoring and the primary reason for going to Phillips Island is to see the Little Penguins.

You can see how windy it is by the sea spray around the tug boat helping us sail out.