We visited Melbourne in August 2006 visit to a friend.

Melbourne is an amazing city, the center is vibrant and there is plenty to do. It's really easy to get around using trams, trains, car or walking.

There is a multitude of restaurants catering for all tastes, plenty of bars, and everywhere we went children were welcome.

The people of Melbourne are just wonderful, truly the nicest people!

Recomended Must Do's!

Just outside the city is the most amazing countryside, a trip on Puffing Billy is an absolute MUST, the people who run the railway are volunteers, they are incredibly lovely friendly helpful people and are happy to spend time talking to you about the railway and even let us all sit on the engine. They gave the kids certificates, completely unprompted. We still remember fondly Max one of the volunteers.

Another brilliant trip is a wine tasting on horse back, a couple of hours ish out of Melbourne City center you can go on horse back through the countryside and through the vineyards, stop for a wine tasting and then ride back, brilliant! We all loved it!

Mornington Penisular is another must, an hour or two from Melbourne City center head towards the ocean and eat Baramundi and chips!

Phillip Island - again fantastic see the little penguins coming up the beach at dusk, Koala's in the wild, just an amazing place.

Visit the MCG too, definately, again the guides there are fantastic, we actually saw some of the Melbourne Football team practicing there. The guide was showing us where the main changing rooms for the team are when the teams manager came out. The manager made us wait a moment and went and got Melbourne Football team scarves for both the kids and one of the star players gave the kids autographs. This was all unprompted.

We visited loads of places in our really short time there, we would definately recommend all the above, plus Melbourne Aquarium and Melbourne Zoo, also the Observatory - a bit out of the way but worth it.

The best thing you can do is buy a Smart Vistior card, which you can buy on line and collect at the Aquarium. When we went to collect our cards they gave us a weeks free train and tram travel card each! We saved loads of money using these.

We can't wait to go back to Melbourne and we'll definately stay in the same apartments when we do.