Hi there!  I am Chiz and I am Billy. We came to Melbourne in February 2011.  We live in North Melbourne, which is a 30 minute walk from the Central Business District (CBD) in Melbourne. Melbourne is the second largest city in Australia and has a great café culture.  While Australia tends to have a mostly Caucasian population, Melbourne is different, with quite a diverse population. As a result, the city is literally a melting pot that has made it and its suburbs unique.

We love good and inexpensive food!  We found a restaurant called Lentil as Anything that is a pay as you feel restaurant run by a unique not-for-profit community organisation.  It is quite an interesting experience paying what you think a meal is worth as opposed to being told what it costs. It’s a buffet style restaurant and only serves vegetarian cuisine. We usually go to the ones in the Abbotsford Convent and Fotscray.

We also love Italian food! On Lygon Street, there are heaps of Italian restaurants.  Tiamo 1 and 2 serve quite good Italian food with good prices.  People tend to go to Tiamo 1 rather than 2 because they have different menus, but it doesn't really matter though since they are next to each other and both menus are served at both places. 

Footscray is one of our favourite areas with many good Chinese and Vietnamese restaurants. Our favourites are Master Restaurant (Chinese) (Shop184/83 Hopkins St.), which serves good dim sum, BBQ, Dumplings and More (Chinese) (S96 Hopkins St.) which serves good North Chinese dumplings with low prices and an unknown shop inside the Little Saigon Market (Byron St, Footscray).

When we like treating ourselves, we usually go to a Japanese restaurant because Japanese food can be quite expensive. Recently, we found two Japanese restaurants, Yu-U (137 Flinders Lane, CBD) and Hajime.  Both of them are located in hidden places and are quite expensive, but worth it for a treat! Also, at both restaurants, taking photos are forbidden which no body knows why.

There are also many Korean restaurants in Melbourne. One of our favorites is Hwaro (563 Little Bourke St.), which serves good Korean BBQ.

Brunetti is one of the best places for desert.  They serve such great varieties of sweets and light snacks.  One of their best branches is in Carlton (194 – 204 Faraday Street, 6am – 11pm/midnight). 

St. Kilda is such a great place for summer.  It is located near the Melbourne Bay and has many cafés with Greek / Italian sweets especially on Aclands Street.  Monarch Cakes is the best place to try out European style sweets.  According to our friend who is originally from Poland, they have the best Polish baked cheesecake!

DRINK:

Melbourne is a place for coffee lovers. With the city’s magic hands, even non-coffee drinkers turn into coffee lovers! Being in Melbourne sharpened up our taste towards coffee!  Carlton Espresso is one of the best cafés in Melbourne where serves delicious sweets and light snacks.  Italian staff with nice smiles always makes us feel welcome.

We love wandering around places.  One of the most fun places to walk around is Brunswick Street - where funky stuff and people are!  All you need to do is walk on one side of the street and walk back on the other side of street. We found many interesting stores, such as Magic Lantern Studio, whose co-owner is from Argentina and is obsessed by mysteries and toys.  Their shop window always displays a different world, which surely goes on a must-see list!   Also, we always enjoy wandering around in streets in the CBD, which have many interesting graffiti on the brick walls.

We love to go to Savers to see if there is anything interesting and reasonable.  Savers is a recycle store, and it seems very popular for Melbournians to go there or to other recycle stores. Even just browsing around is fun to do! 

Many guidebooks suggest going to the Queen Victoria Market. We also suggest checking out this Melbourne icon, but also suggest going to the Little Saigon Market in Footscray. It is an amazing little market that caters to the local Vietnamese population. 
Not only Melbournians, but all Aussies love barbie (not the doll)!  Usually parks have barbies and people can use them for free.  So why not try it!

We also found the farmers’ markets quite popular in Melbourne.  There are heaps of markets on weekends.  Two of the greatest markets are Slow Food Farmers’ Market at the Abbotsford Convent, and South Melbourne Market.

1. Do not tip unless you feel you want to because tipping is not a custom here.  (It is nice if you tip though.)

2. If you do not mind carrying change, you should not buy Myki card.  To get a Myki card, it costs AU$10 which is not refundable. 

3. If you are not a roller-coaster lover, it is better for you to erase Luna Park from your list. It quite expensive if you consider the fare and what you get.  It is worth taking a photo of its famous gate though.