Staying in the heart of Melbourne

by docdivatraveller - 1/13/2020

So its been officially two and a half years now that we are obsessed with living in someone's else's home! Yes, staying in B n B's started in Istanbul and since then we have been booking homes. I mean what is a better way to peek into someone's culture? None! The amount of fun/ knowledge and exposure we get in staying with a foreign local is unmatched. Not to forget the spaces are much bigger than a hotel room (sometimes we have the entire apartment to ourselves) and hot locations. So in this trip too, we booked B n Bs wherever we halted.

Melbourne was our first stop in Australia and we decided to stay in the heart of the city ie Southbank. Although it was far from the airport (as expected) but that was not an issue as we wanted some place near the railway station. So after boarding the Skybus from the airport and then boarding the city train and tram we reached Southbank. We were pretty surprised from the moment we arrived in Melbourne. Everything was written in Chinese as well as in English.

The moment we came out from the tram, the city seemed more Shanghai to us! I mean we saw more Chinese and Indian faces than Caucasians! Even our host, whose home we were headed to was Chinese.

Our rental was in the heart of Southbank; just a stone's throw away from the Crown and Eureka skydeck. The name of the building was City Apartments and our place was on the fourteenth floor.

The place was really small (as could be expected from its location) and we did not have much access to the rest of the apartment except the kitchen. Our host Crystal was sweet but she hated noise which was quite a problem for us :D

The view from the balcony was amazing. On the right side one could see the Yarra river and the St Kilda beach was visible on the left. The twinkling lights at night were mesmerising.

This accommodation was probably the second costliest of our trip; although the space was the smallest! That is the downside of staying in heart of the city. We also had access to the apartment's temperature controlled swimming pool (something which I don't get here) as well as the gym. I could use the pool only once that too on our first day as rest of the days we were out by 5 AM and came back by 2 AM.

It was definitely not at all a luxurious stay but we loved the feeling of staying in Southbank for those few hours!