Apartment Alkira – Boutique Melbourne Short Stay Accommodation

If you’re bored with the bland multiplex cinema experience, have a squizz at what’s on offer with Melbourne’s Underground Cinema.  This entrepreneurial movement takes odd and eclectic venues and converts them into stylish cinema accommodation for one-off screenings in central and inner city Melbourne.  So you could end watching your next blockbuster in a a disused warehouse, a forgotten ballroom or a disused carpark.

Check their site for details:  Underground Cinema Website

This unconventional approach to cinematic viewing is brought to you by Melbourne short stay apartment specialists, Apartment Alkira. 

If your slightly obsessive commitment to your daily caffeine ritual nudges the religious, then you might want to partake of some pastoral care, compliments of one of our fave Melbourne resources –Broadsheet. 

During the Melbourne Food and Wine Festival (the first two weeks of March), Broadsheet is hosting the Broadsheet Cafe on Crossley Street.  This is no ordinary cafe, but a temporary cafe ‘curated’ by the cultural enterprise that showcases six exceptional, hand-selected Melbourne cafes who will send their best barista to pump out shots of black heavenly goodness every day over the two week festival. 

This is your chance to take a walk on the wild side with an unknown bean (management accepts no responsibility for resultant bean or cafe conversions).

If you’re visiting Melbourne, check out the huge range of other activities complements of the annual Melbourne Food and Wine Festival, there’s something for zealots and atheists alike.

Broasheet details of daily line-up (*above pic nicked from here)

Melbourne Food and Wine Festival

This wee incitement to drink more of Melbourne’s great coffee,
brought to you by the people at short stay Apartment Alkira – caffeine addicts from way back.

For the francophiles out there, this year’s Alliance Française French Film Festival is a delight.  The gorgeous Clotilde Hesme (see pic) takes the somewhat clunky sounding title of the festival’s ‘Ambassador of French cinema’.  Not so clunky however is the beautiful french drama she’ll be introducing at the festival. Angele and Tony gets a special screening and Q&A session with the beautiful Clothilde on March 10th.

Clothilde has a short stay in Melbourne before choofing off to Sydney, so enjoy her self-contained frenchiness while you can.

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This invitation to embrace your inner francophile, brought to you by Melbourne’s best short stay accommodation, Apartment Alkira

…well for Autumn anyway.  So if you’re heading to Melbourne any time between now and the end of April, slip down to the city’s arts precinct and you’ll find the bewitching sparkly hand sewn, multi-sided tent made of tassels, mirrors, canvas and leaded glass.  An ecclectic range of performers are accommodated in the gorgeous interior.  Book if you can.

Another lesson in how to be a hedonist when in Melbourne for a short stay, brought to you by Apartment Alkira, self contained boutique apartments in the CBD.

Nahji Chu, self-deigned, Queen of the Rice Paper Roll, brings ‘The Roll’ to Melbourne.  Not that Melbourne has been without a good supply of vietnamese eateries offering the uniquely asian morsel, but as The Queen puts it, no-one can make a rice paper roll quite like her. 

Finding accommodation at the top end of the CBD in Exhibition Street, ’Miss Chu’ opened a couple of weeks ago as a ‘hole-in-the-wall’ in the style of her Sydney sister store. While the place is tinsy, it’s worth dealing with the throngs to enjoy the fabulously fresh asian tid-bits which almost bounce off the plate and into your mouth.

Whether ‘The Queen’ develops a following of loyal subjects and is here for a short stay or long one, remains to be seen. For our money, this outpost of her empire is a welcome addition to Melbourne’s culturally diverse foodie scene.

Another foodie review brought to you by Apartment Alkira – Melbourne’s boutique
short stay apartment specialists.

This is no ordinary vintage shop.  The newest boutique to find itself accommodation in Melbourne’s quirky Royal Arcade sits under Hunter Gatherer, a niche brand of the Brotherhood of St Laurence.

But you’re still wondering why this is significant, right?  Well it means their stock is sourced from nearly 30 ’Op Shops’ from across Victoria, so they’ve already done all the hard work when it comes to finding good quality vintage gear. 

It also means that you can quiet your nagging anti-consumerist  alter ego because the more you buy the more you help.  Recycling clothes is good for all sorts of economic, social and eco reasons, but doing it at a Hunter Gather store will make sure your pennies go to Brotherhood of St Laurence programmes that support people in need.  Now go shop.

The new store can be found at:
 Shop 51, Royal Arcade, 335 Bourke Street Mall, Melbourne CBD

This handy CBD shopping tip is brought to you by Apartment Alkira, one of
Melbourne’s best boutique short stay apartments.

Questions we’ve been pondering: Why is it that almost every airport on the face of the earth is the same nondescript, bland, soulless vaccuum of artificial air and plastic food?  And why are airport food prices automatically inflated like you’re suddenly on a completely different world currency?

We have no answers to either, but we have stumbled upon an antidote at Melbourne’s major international and domestic Airport – our pill comes in the form of Cafe Vue at Melbourne Airport.

Here the food tastes like it has organic origins as opposed to a string of numbers in the form of additives and preservatives.  And more surprising are the prices which are moderate and reflect fairly the good quality ingredients used.  Quite remarkable.

Cafe Vue at Melbourne Airport serves five senses coffee and a range of lovely nibbly things. They do fab brekkies and a handful of dishes throughout the day, but the highlight has got to be the divine ‘lunchboxes’ full of delicious morsels which you can smuggly pop on your dropdown table as your plane departs, making your fellow passengers and the cabin crew green with envy. I’m not sure the first class meals would be nearly as good.

More yummy places to eat in (or on your way to…er…from) Melbourne.  Brought to you by one of the city’s best boutique short stay apartments in the CBD.

Oh my. Poor Ruby. How to wipe your street-cred in one foul snap.

How could the grooviest chick-a-dee of the nation look so terribly daggy? Well a happy snap with Melbourne’s Lord Mayor, Robert Doyle, will probably do it.

For those unfamiliar with Ruby Rose, she’s MTVs superstar presenter, fashion designer and icon for the hip and groovy.  Ahem.

But we digress.  The point of this post is to let you know that Melbourne’s first ‘Treasure Hunt’ starts on Feb 12th and could be fun and/or prosperous.  There’s allegedly $40,000 worth of prizes to be won, so if you’re feeling nonchalant about life, pop on down to the Melbourne Town Hall and grab a Treasure map.  Ruby Rose probably won’t be handing them out…but then…you never know.

more info on Melbourne’s Treasure Hunt here

This slightly disrespectful post is brought to you by Melbourne’s best boutique apartment accommodation, Apartment Alkira

So, you have a vague fascination with classical music, but you’re worried you’ll need a mortgage extension, a penguin outfit and/or a taffeta frock to front up to a performance?  Well think again.  For the next two weeks all you need is a picnic, a rug, a BBQ chicken and some plastic champagne glasses.

For the past 52 years the MSO has gifted Melbournians and her visitors free and fabulous summer concerts at the Myer Music Bowl for two Wednesday and two Saturday nights.

And these shows go off.  You thought Lady Gaga could pull a crowd.  Each year more than 10,000 bums are firmly planted on the soft green grass so it’s worth making an effort to get there early and nab your spot.  The Myer Music Bowl is located within the Royal Botanical Gardens.

Conductor’s baton rises at 7pm sharp.

MSO Free concerts – Programme details and info

And where better to stay in Melbourne than around the corner from the concert venue at Apartment Alkira, Queen Street, Melbourne, CBD

Once home to the bohemian and the bad, St Kilda has been gentrified to within an inch of it’s now, very posh life.  Eclectic and slightly off-beat cafes and bars have given way to the slick and the sensible, some say for the better, the old school of course, argue it’s for the worse.

Melbournians still clearly love their favorite sea-side suburb, gentrification or no gentrification. And summer is still the best time to enjoy St Kilda.  For the past 30 years summer in the suburb has heralded the lead-in to the St Kilda festival, attracting hundreds of thousands of party-goers and sun seekers who bask in a week of music, arts events and sun.  What started it’s life as a community event has morphed into a full-scale massive enterprise, but the rewards are still there for those who toddle out the 10kms from the CBD to promenade on the foreshore.

Running from February 5th to 13th, the final firecracker is a giant street party on Sunday. Bands are varied and diverse, but big names include, The Medics, Hungry Kids of Hungary, Jebediah and Lady Lash.

Keepin’ down and groovy.  Yeah.  Munn.
Apartment Alkira is hip to the beat – one of Melbourne’s best short stay apartments in the central CBD area.