The second last day in Melbourne was spent sleeping in, eating at our favourite cafés, visiting the Melbourne Zoo, window shopping, frantically searching for souvenirs and gifts for family, my favourite bubble teas and spending most of our money on expensive but scrumptious food in Chinese restaurants. It pretty much meant spending most of our remaining cash.
Brunch was at a fancy patisserie. Do check out Laurent Boulangerie Patisserie along 306 Little Collins Street. It’s a gem! Typically, breakfast in cafés would set us back around AUD30 which was rather cheap considering the fact that everything we ordered was mouth-wateringly good! We didn’t have time to try out everything there as the Melbourne Zoo was beckoning us.
Melbourne Zoo was mediocre. It didn’t have the petting zoo which I had hoped it did. Perth Zoo was so much better. I had managed to feed kangaroos, carried a FAT wombat and caressed a sleeping koala. It was so much fun. Hence I was majorly disappointed B didn’t get to experience these in the Melbourne Zoo.
By the way, to side-track a little, be sure to get hold of all sorts of discount cards at the reception area at Quest on Bourke or Federation Square. Different cards offer different discounts at various places of interests. They’ll definitely come in handy and save you some moolah which could easily amount up to a hundred Aussie dollars. With the exchange rate that high now (SGD1.34=AUD1.3), these tens of dollars do matter.
Dinner at Crystal Jade along Chinatown was extremely costly—AUD100 for 2 small bowls of soup, a plate of asparagus stir-fried with succulent scallops, clay pot chicken simmered in Chinese wine and a serving of 2 pieces of Peking duck meat rolled in crepes each. The Peking duck was somewhat different from what we ate back home. It wasn’t as crispy and fragrant. The chicken was a letdown as do most chicken dishes in Melbourne. No marination whatsoever. Either way, the finger-licking good dinner left both of us beaming.
The night was spent roaming the streets of Melbourne, not forgetting to pop by Myer to enjoy a canoli and macaroon at a cafe, and enjoying the icy cold breeze before it was back to our sunny island tomorrow.
