Melbourne Day 2: Queen Victoria Market, Royal Arcade & Block Arcade

Continuation from Melbourne Day 1: Federation Square, Hosier Lane & Flinders Street Station

Our beds at Victoria Hall were so comfy until we overslept! Seeing that everything in Melbourne CBD are fairly near we decide to walk again. Our first destination for day 2 is Queen Victoria Market. But first we made a small detour to Franklin Street to check out something for our coming trip. Will let you know when it’s time.

Queen Victoria Market or QVM in short is Melbourne’s premier market since 1878.


The moment I stepped into this deli hall, I know I’m going to love this place to bits.

This market is divided into several precincts; open-air fruits & vegetables stalls, deli hall, meat hall, organics, food court, wine market, general merchandise & street shops.

Come now, let me take you to a little tour.

This shop at the deli hall has the most crowds. We bought a borek (flavor: spinach, cheese, parsley) @ AUD2.50. It was warm & yummy!

Pasta shop, nuts & honey & cheese.
Bought 100g of honey roasted macadamia nuts @ AUD3.50 and mixed nuts @ AUD2.60 to sample. There are also bread, cakes, bratwurst & pizza shops.

Ready to eat pickled & marinated food. Saw some of the locals bought this and had it with bread. Ohh yum-yum.

Sausages, bacon… seriously if I have more time I will buy these and cook myself.

Next is the Meat Hall. As we all know market place usually is wet and smelly. Nope not here. If I were to blindfold you, you wouldn’t know you’ve step inside the meat hall. Haha

Assorted fishes & seafood.

Meats!!!

We crossed over to the fruits & vegetables area.

Since this is the beginning of spring, there weren’t any berries available except strawberry. We bought 3 packets of strawberry @ AUD4.00. 1 packet = 250g. Cheap eh?

Vegetables stalls. I was ooohiing and wahhing along the way. So many variety!!! And fresh too.

Nuts in shells.

We check out the general merchandise area a little and decide we will come back again a day before we go back. We need more time to shop! Haha

Had Pide Bread Bakery’s chicken souvlaki @ AUD9.50 (QVM’s food court) for lunch. Sorry no picture of the food as we were hungry, exhausted & tired.

Went back to the hostel and had 2 hour of blissful nap. Hehe

Around 4pm we walked to the Royal Arcade @ Collins Street.

Royal Arcade is a 19th century heritage shopping arcade. Look how well it was preserved. Tsk too bad for the closing down thingy.

The famous Gog & Magog figures and the clock which chimes every hour.

By exiting the arcade under Gog & Magog we come to Little Collins Street where Block Arcade another heritage shopping arcade is located.

The place is really majestic.
This is where we bought some Haigh’s chocolate and truffles. Haigh’s chocolate was founded in Adelaide in the early 20th century.

Beautiful tiles covering the whole of Block Arcade.

We visited several more shops along Lonsdale Street and Bourke Street. Then we could walk no more.

While dragging our tired legs back to our hostel, we decided to have dinner at Seoul Tookbegi Korean Restaurant @ Russell Street. Do click at the link to read what we had there.

6.30pm evening sky.
Taken in front of Old Melbourne Gaol (old 19th century prison). Our hostel, Victoria Hall is just opposite it.

After dinner we went back to the hostel. Later on we went out again. This time to Woolworths & Big W at QV Centre. They are supermarket & discount departmental store respectively.

These are self-checkout lane at Woolsworth. I was acting ‘so ulu’ that when we visited another supermarket, Coles few days later my sister told me not to bring out my camera. Having seen and used this self-checkout system in US, my sister asked me “Have you seen anyone taking pictures at Tesco and Giant or not?” I said no lo. That was when I realized how “monkey” I was. But then can’t blame me ma. Malaysia don’t have ma. Hahaha

Anyway the self-checkout system need occasion card-swiping by several stand-by operators. I’m not sure why. We kept pressing ‘Need assistance’. LOL At first it was because I didn’t know how to operate it and because we’re not sure where the changed slot is (LOL) but then later very mysteriously the operator will pop up beside us and swipe a card.

Ended the night by watching a French movie in my comfy hostel bed.

So that’s day 2. Stay tuned for day 3 ya. 😉