How to Make the Most of 1 Day in Melbourne

We were on a tight timeline for our 2-week road trip down Australia's East Coast — so much so that we only gave ourselves ONE day to explore Melbourne before flying up to Cairns and starting our road trip. Though it can get a little crazy at times, we actually prefer this type of quick and efficient travel. Don't get us wrong, we take time to sit back and enjoy one place at a time when warranted. But we've also been known to spend all day on foot and public transportation hitting a city's main tourist sights, wandering cool neighborhoods, and trying to experience life as the residents do at some of the best local hangouts. We pretty much consider it a personal mission to see everything there is to see, no matter how short a time frame we have or how exhausted we become. 😅It's super achievable as long as you do your research beforehand!

Here, we'll break down our one whirlwind day in Melbourne in super specific detail so you can pick and choose the parts that sound best to you when planning your own Melbourne day trip — or even better, a more extended stay! Enjoy!

We arrived in Melbourne from New Zealand late at night, so all we had time to do was take the train into the city from the airport, check into our Airbnb, and crash. That meant we got to experience one of our favorite feelings in the world the next morning...waking up in a new place you haven't even seen by the light of day, bright-eyed and ready to explore!

We were actually woken up bright and early due to the loud noises of the tram and morning commuters right outside our window, along with the barking of the (super cute) weiner dog owned by our Airbnb host. We usually like to sleep in a bit, but we won’t hold it against you, Noodle — more time to explore!

Noodle…our very cute, very barky roommate.

Our Airbnb host was already at work, so we spent some time playing with her cute pup and browsing through the amazing binder she'd put together of neighborhood recommendations. There’s nothing better than a host with a binder. 😍

We were staying in the Windsor neighborhood, which is described by Airbnb as featuring "Art Deco buildings, muraled facades, and idle coffee (or cocktail) dates in the city's southeast." Quick tip...we always use Airbnb's neighborhood guides if they exist for a city we're visiting to decide which neighborhood to book our stay in. In Melbourne, we filtered for words like "trendy," "coffee culture," "dining," etc. while also comparing how close the neighborhoods were to all the things we want to see. You can filter by tons of different keywords to find the hood that's right for you, and then restrict your search to homes located in that neighborhood.

Our host's amazing binder led us to our first stop of the day, breakfast just around the corner at Journeyman Cafe. Melbourne is known for taking pride in its coffee, and our first cups truly did not disappoint. Ray enjoyed a mocha (“mocca” in Australian) and Sam got an iced latte. And then came the food...omg! We had been eating cheap breakfasts of fruit and croissants on the road in New Zealand over the past three weeks, and this was one of the most delicious breakfasts (or "breakkie" — we love the abbrevs!) we'd had in weeks. Sam got a benedict with pork belly and baked apples, and Ray got a his go-to, a lox bagel.

Feeling full and satisfied, we set off on our fast-paced tour of Melbourne.

First we walked to the nearest tram station, Prahan, and had a full on struggle trying to load up our myki cards. These are Melbourne's transportation cards that can be used on all trams and buses, and the previous guests at our Airbnb had left some empty ones for us to reload. For some reason, the machines at the station wouldn't take our credit cards. We eventually tried a debit card and it worked! The world shall never know why our credit cards didn’t work on these machines…but trial and error is a big part of travel, right? We added money to our mykis, estimating how much we'd need for the day, and were on our way!

We got off the tram right in the heart of the CBD. First, we stopped in the free motion picture museum for a few minutes, which gave a pretty interesting overview of Australian TV, cinema, and gaming history. Continuing our walk, we enjoyed the beautiful architecture of Flinders Street Station, St. Paul’s Cathedral, and The Forum Theatre and then continued on through Chinatown, which would have been a good place to stop if it were lunchtime.

The beautiful Forum Theatre, designed in Moorish revival style.

There's a free tram that circles the CBD, so we hopped on and made our way over to the Queen Victoria Market. Every blog we'd read recommended getting the hot jam doughnuts there, and as pretty aggressive doughnut lovers we were all over it. We found the food truck called American Doughnut Kitchen pretty much right away. They were fresh out of the fryer and soooo good. 🤤We enjoyed them while watching some pretty sick live music at the market too. Honestly, the rest of the market wasn't super exciting because we weren't looking to buy anything.

We quickly moved along, walking over to the Italian neighborhood of Carlton to continue our food tour. The stop that we had researched beforehand is a gelateria called Pidapipo, which specializes in seasonal and unique flavors. As our fairly norm-core selves, we didn't go that crazy with our flavor selections — Sam got raspberry mascarpone and Ray got hazelnut — but both were delicious! Here us out…gelato as a mid-morning snack should be come more of a sanctioned activity...ya feel us?

Continuing our walk, we entered the ultra-trendy neighborhood of Fitzroy. To quote Airbnb's neighborhood guides again, "Sporting black rimmed glasses and impossibly cool threads, the young and alternative citizens of Fitzroy bike by vibrant murals before settling in at one of the area's endless eating and drinking options." After our big breakfast followed by doughnuts and gelato, we were now too full to settle at one of the ultra trendy bars or restaurants just yet. BUT, we did explore two of the coolest shops we've ever been in. One was a huge warehouse-type space selling art, historical maps, tons of cool paper goods, craft supplies and more. It's difficult to explain just how awesome it was! The other was a vintage store specializing in American sports and Western / Americana culture. Ray was in heaven among all of the classic jerseys and Western-wear. He definitely fancies himself an early American settler / cowboy in a past life.

Terraced houses with tons of character all throughout Melbourne. This one was found in Fitzroy.

By this time, we had almost come full circle back to the CBD. We explored inside the beautiful St. Peters Cathedral. We even took the elevator up to the 35th floor of the Sofitel hotel because a bunch of blogs mentioned the "bathrooms with a view." It's true, the bathrooms have floor to ceiling windows making for a pretty enjoyable pee break...but it's nothing out of this world to prioritize if you don’t find yourself nearby.

Next we strolled across the Princes Bridge. Tired from all the walking, we sat outside Hamer Hall facing the river for a bit, basking in the sun and enjoying the pretty view of the city skyline.

Our favorite Melbourne skyline view of the day, from outside Hamer Hall.

We decided to explore the laid-back, beachside St. Kilda neighborhood next and hopped on another tram to get there. St. Kilda reminded us of Venice Beach — a little hippie, a little grungy, and very beachy vibes. Not a ton was going on along the beachfront at that time, so we grabbed beers and decided that for dinner we wanted to head back to our favorite neighborhood we'd seen during the day, the Fitzroy and Collingwood area.

That meant back on the tram! By this time, we were super sick of tram rides and having to constantly figure out where we were going…but as we mentioned…personal goals! We walked through Fitzroy and into Collingwood, enjoying all of the cool murals and street art along the way. We stopped at all the restaurants to browse the menus, trying to decide where to stop and eat. In the end, we chose a place called Hotel Jesus in Collingwood. Such a solid choice if we do say so ourselves! It can be very difficult to find good Mexican food outside the U.S. and Mexico itself, and this place was a true gem. We loved the chicken quesadilla, carnitas “volcano” (like a tostada made of fried cheese), ceviche, sangria, and green chorizo tacos (which we hadn’t seen since Mexico City!)

After dinner, we took the tram back to our Airbnb. We had another early morning the next day and a flight to catch up to Cairns. Our one day in Melbourne was an absolute whirlwind, but we feel we did a pretty good job seeing a variety of neighborhoods and experiencing a day in the life of the city. If you find yourself in Melbourne for a short time, we hope you can pick and choose some of these stops to build your perfect day!

There are surely some cool Melbourne sights we missed. Let us know about them in the comments, or on our latest Instagram post!

Happy travels!