2017 has been a particularly fine year for coffee, food and cocktails for me, partly because I've travelled to diverse destinations with copious coffee and culinary delights. Remind me not to work on next year's list on an empty stomach: reviewing so many food and drink photos gave me quite the appetite!

I've only been back from my month-long trip to Australia and New Zealand for ten days and I'm already missing both countries. I blogged on the road about the places I visited — Australia here and New Zealand here — and have posted some of my favourite photos on Flickr — Australia here and New Zealand here — but I also wanted to report back on my overall itinerary: where I stayed, how I got there and how I spent my time. I had 28 full days so this is a very long article and you may wish to make a cup of coffee before you dive in.

One of the main reasons I wanted to visit Melbourne was to explore the city’s extensive and diverse specialty coffee scene. Italian-style espresso coffee and espresso-bar culture first reached the city in the 1950s, although took another couple of decades to take off. Now, almost every block in the CBD has at least one specialty coffee shop and there are numerous roasters and micro-roasters based in the city.

After two pleasant overnight flights with Singapore Airlines, I touched down at Melbourne’s Tullamarine Airport just after 7:20 am on Sunday and, thanks to the electronic immigration stations (alas, no passport stamp for me) and a speedy SkyBus journey, I arrived at my hotel just after 8:15 am. This was too early to check in, but just the right time to head off in search of jet lag-busting coffee and breakfast. I slept pretty well on both flights and was more than ready to start exploring.