Melbourne Day 2

Day 2 in Melbourne started a little slowly, but to be fair I could start most of the remaining posts about this trip with words that are like those. This was our mess around in the city day, so we wandered around and eventually made it to the Yarra riverfront. We bumped into some boat guys, who recommended taking the ferry out to Williamstown. It's a nice little town with some great little restaurants. We chose one, and enjoyed a nice lunch outside. Nothing spectacular, but an acceptable lunch along the tourist restaurant strip. We stop on the way back to the boat for a refreshing gelato, and grab the ferry back to Melbourne. By this time in the day it was blazing hot. We packed for cool weather, and were just not ready for the kind of warmth we faced in Melbourne. We took an uncomfortable ride on the circle tram around the city, but when it stopped for too long and the airflow stopped we had absolutely had enough. It was hot, stinky and unpleasant the entire way. It was too bad, because you actually get a good solid look at the city that way, along with informative narration. We found ourselves right near Chinatown, so we took a look around for the place we intended to have dinner. We found the restaruant without much trouble, and grabbed a little street snack of samosas to help us get through the journey. We did a little shopping, and a quick shot of internet, and then made our way back to the apartment to rest and clean up before dinner. Cleaned and refreshed, we started with a trip over to the rialto towers for a gorgeous sunset and bottle of wine on the observation deck. Next we walked back down to china town for a really fabulous dinner at Kum den. Yeah, I know what you're thinking, but not only is it a real restaurant, it is awesome. Go in, order the eggplant, and do not miss the Mongolian Lamb, it's spectacular.

Australia Take 3, Phase 2

After a little warm up time in Sydney, it was off to meet the in-laws in Melbourne. Start by taking a look to the left at an A380 sitting next to a 747. That's a BIG bird. Our trip to Melbourne was to be pretty lazy, with the exception of a visit to the 12 apostles and the penguins, other than that, we were pretty flexible. We arrived in Melbourne first, dropped our bags off at the Medina Grand Melbourne Apartments, and were ready to go find some lunch. We went to a little restaurant row near the hotel, but didn't know what we wanted and didn't really want to be stood over while we tried to read our way through the menus. We eventually settled on a little Vietnamese place off the main restaurant area on little Bourke street. Here's a funny thing about Melbourne, there is often a large main street, and then a smaller version of that same street. In this case there's a Bourke and a little Bourke. It's always abbreviated Lt. which I spent most of the first day calling Lieutenant. After lunch we found our way to a Grocery store and picked up some provisions for our stay. Food in Australia is ridiculously expensive, so it only made sense to pick up some breakfast food and some wine to have around the apartment for the rest of our stay. After the in-laws arrived we wandered back down to the main restaurant area for dinner. At dinner time almost all the places were offering a free bottle of wine with dinner, and we settled into a nice little Italian place for what turned out to be a pretty great dinner. Sometimes these places that are all jammed together can be merely average, but we stumbled into something pretty decent. I know we have a card for it somewhere, If I find it I'll update. The rest of what you're looking at here are two views from our apartment balcony. This location is really great.

Australia Take 3 day 1

I'm going to pretend like nothing's changed, that I've been posting regularly all along and that me jumping right into this post is perfectly natural. None of those things are true, but if I keep waiting to post until I can catch you up completely I'll forget all the important details. We'll also pretend like it hasn't been two months since these things happened, and talk about them in fake real time. Now, without further ado.
W's parents were taking this really fabulous cruise from San Francisco to Sydney with lot's of island hopping in between. We thought for a long time about how to join them on the trip, and W planned to meet them in Sydney while I stayed home and worked. Well, I suddenly found myself without meaningful work again, and had the flexibility to ride along too. We jumped into a couple of Business class seats on the Sydney flight, with the plan to stay there for a few days and then meet the in-laws . We hadn't been to the movies all summer long, so a 14 hour flight in early November is filled with summer blockbusters letting you get caught up at a time when you have nothing better to do anyway. On arrival in Sydney we rode in to the city with the flight crew, and hung out around the Hotel they stay in and had some food at harbourside until we met up with new Aussie buddy Paul. Paul is the husband of one of W's flying co-workers, and bent over backwards to make sure we enjoyed our stay. He picked us up downtown and took us back to his place in North Sydney. As you can see Paul and have an incredible view of all the good stuff in town, so our accommodations were pretty spectacular. We just kind of piddled around downtown for a while, and then met Paul so he could take us to a favorite local Pub for dinner. I was hoping I could find the name of it someplace, but alas this is what you get when you wait 3 months to tell a story. As I'm sitting here I'm thinking, maybe I ought to come down to one post here, because the details about this part of the trip are pretty fuzzy for me. Here's what I do know. We had the better part of 2 whole days in Sydney, and on each of the two nights we went to dinner with Paul. The first night was a trip to the North Sydney leagues club with a pilot who works for the same company as W and the third was a local pub where W still talks about the lamb burger she got, with a guest appearence by one more fellow employee . We enjoyed more than our share of wine and beer over the two day stint, and more than our share of local "home style" cuisine. Think of it as Aussie comfort food, with a beer. We found lots of little food courts to have cheap food on the go, and we even made the trip over to Manly one day. We had lunch at one of the many little restaurants in the tourist stip the day we were there, and took an easy walk. W is still suffering from our walk up to the monastery, so our tourism related walks are pretty short these days. we walked around Manly some, checking out the flora and fauna. Check out the parrots that come hang out on Paul's patio too, they practically come in the house looking for the honey he puts in that bowl.