Thanks to some advice that a friend gave us, my wife and I took our bicycles down to Melbourne last week. We stayed at the Victoria Hotel which is right in the middle of downtown Melbourne next to the town hall. Melbourne (as I’ve mentioned before) is a very cycle friendly place. One morning we cycled down to St.Kilda, which was only about a 15 to 20 minute cycle away, to have breakfast.

St.Kilda has a bit of a mixed reputation amongst the locals. It’s seen as a bit of a tourist destination that is full of poseurs.  Sure enough, St. Kilda has it’s quota of guys making a big display of riding their bikes with arms folded but it’s nowhere near as painful as Venice Beach in Los Angeles which has to be the wanker capitol of the world.

In St. Kilda we enjoyed Acland Street with is lovely old world cake shops; St. Kilda Pier and the ride back to downtown via Kerferd Street which has some very lovely old houses from the Victorian era

 through the Federation style

and then onto the late Art Nouveau period.

When I was in New Orleans many years ago I thought that too much fuss was made over the few old buildings they had there with “iron lace”. If you like that sort of thing, Australia has much, much more of it in Sydney and Melbourne.