I can definitely say that I ate a lot of pizza while in I was in Melbourne. I worked it out to find that I’d eaten pizza on seven days out of the previous nine, and miraculously I wasn’t sick of it yet. When we were invited to stay a night with our friends Lucy and Ian in the beautiful Dandenongs, I offered to make lunch the next day. And it was, you guessed it, pizza. Steve had the idea to make a tiny sweet pizza out of some extra dough topped with Nutella and lollies. Not everyone was convinced it would work, but it turned out interestingly. The lollies take on a completely different texture when baked – gooey and sticky with the sweetness even more pronounced.

After lunch, we went up the hill to Sassafras, or “Sassy” for short – a gorgeous little town boasting Miss Marples Tea Room, a fascinating little toyshop, and a wonderful teapot shop. The queue for the tea room was out the door and down the street as they don’t take bookings, so we stocked up on sweets from the lolly shop – hard to find almond M&M’s and peanut butter M&M’s. After a short bush walk, we caught a train back to the city because we had a 5am wakeup the next morning for the MotoGP, although with daylight savings kicking in, it felt like 4am!

It was an interesting experience; the atmosphere was friendly and fun, reaching fever-pitched excitement for the main race. Loyalties were spread between Australian Casey Stoner who won, and Valentino Rossi who started in 12th position and impressively finished 2nd. It was quite cold in the morning as the track is right on the ocean, but it turned out to be an absolutely beautiful day. We met some lovely people, but the highlight of the day was seeing Alvaro Bautista hitting a seagull on his motorbike! It happened right in front of where we were standing, and I saw it sitting on the track and urged it to move but as the bikes came flying around the corner, it was too late. Poor little guy!

The following day we explored Carlton, with the famous Lygon St boasting countless restaurants. Our first stop however was Brunetti’s where we shared vanilla and pistachio profiteroles, a fruit tart and some crostoli. Everything was great, including the coffee. In fact the quality of coffee in Melbourne generally seems considerably higher than in Sydney – out of the several that I had, only one was average. We saw a movie (Wall-E, which we just loved) and had dinner at an Italian restaurant, before stopping in to Koko Black quickly for a chocolate truffle fix.

Yes, we did manage some shopping, which may just be what Melbourne is most famous for. I bought a great little black dress, as I realised I didn’t actually own one, and as everyone knows it is a must-have in any woman’s wardrobe. We caught the tram to St Kilda, had lunch in a nice little park and wandered down Fitzroy St to Fritz Gelato. It was a cold, windy day and at 3pm the girl told us we were her first customers of the day. I loved the gelato, mine was chocolate hazelnut with plum pudding. We also stopped in quickly to Baker D.Chirico for a coffee, though sadly we couldn’t fit in anything else.

Pushka is a tiny café in a laneway off a laneway. The walls outside it are covered with framed pictures, and the place just screams Melbourne. It’s quirky and fun, arty but not pretentious. Little touches like fancy antique spoons to go with your coffee make it something special. Everything about the place appealed to me, and almost made me want to open a tiny café of my own.

Our last stop before heading to the airport was Laurent Patisserie, which was located literally footsteps from our hotel, though we didn’t realise until our last day. If we had, we might have spent a whole lot more time there! I loved my pear tartlet, but no visit would be complete without some macarons – vanilla and lemon flavoured. Steve enjoyed his undeniably pretty chocolate and macadamia crème brulee.

I really enjoyed seeing much more of Melbourne this trip than in all my other trips there combined. It is such an interesting, diverse city with so much more to see, do and eat. We never made it to the Chokolait Hub, and an unfortunate last minute scheduling clash meant that I never got to catch up with Linda from Butter, Sugar, Flour as we’d planned. It’s certain that I’ll be back just as soon as I can. Though there’s a lot to be said about coming home, too. Flying back into Sydney at night is magical. The city sparkles and sprawls on seemingly forever. I don’t particularly like goodbyes, but Melbourne, we’ll see you later.