Australian Autumn - day 2

Melbourne - love it! Clean, cosmopolitan, friendly, beautiful. This was our first official day in Mel. We woke up after a surprisingly un-jet lagged night, sleeping for almost 7 hrs straight. It looked a bit yucky outside, looking out the window I saw folks with umbrellas....there was a light drizzle. Darn! We'd come prepared for cold weather, not rain. So we sort of stalled around, had a solid breakfast to keep us going for along time. Typically when we travel and are staying at hotels, we really load up on the breakfast which keeps us going till the evening, we steal some whole fruit to have as a  light snack later in the day, then have a good dinner. It works for us.  That way we don't have to break in between a busy sightseeing day for lunch or whatever. We just keep going!


After chalking out a tentative plan, we caught the Melbourne City Circle, a fantastic tram service that runs a route encircling all the spots visitors usually see. We got on right across the street from our hotel and then got off at the Melbourne Aqaurium. We figured we should do some indoorsy stuff today, and leave the outdoor stuff till for the rest of the week when the weather is supposed to get much better.


I won't go into too much details of the Aquarium. It is probably like most other aquariums we have been to - Seattle, LA, etc...BUT THEY HAD PENGUINS! Lots of penguins! Little waddly guys, big waddly guys, walking funny, honking funny and staring at you with their little round beady eyes. Oh they were so cute. We must have spent a half hour just watching them walk around and swim in the water tank, They were so human I almost feel they were right before us in the evolutionary chain and not apes.  And they seem so intelligent it seems wrong to hold them in captivity like this....

Then we saw coral reefs, sharks, weird fishies, green leaf dragons, sea horses, turtles and so on. The place was swarming with little school kids all shrieking and yelling and hoarse voiced teachers yelling after them.

Next stop was Cook's Cottage. No, nothing to do with cooking, but Captain James Cook. His cottage he loved in was bought by some rich guy who moved it from England to Melbourne. It's a lovely old Tudor home, ivy covered and charming.

After that we wandered around the lovely gardens.......

bought some seeds at the gardening shop and then walked from there to the Melbourne Cricket Ground. We hadn't really planned on going to the MCG, but the recent win has put back the cricket fire in us, we had to. We signed up for a one hour tour by a 60 plus something lady guide, Carol,  who was like the Energizer Bunny. She took us up and down the stairs, the changing rooms the dining rooms, the private viewing galleries, the training rooms, the batting cages and we were really pushing to keep up with her! Amazing lady.

The best part was a photograph the MCG has of legendary Australian batsman Donald Bradman along with Sachin Tendulkar taken on DB's 90th birthday. Apparently he shies away from all publicity and for this photo he wanted only 2 cricketeers he thought were worthy of this picture...Sachin and Shane Warne. Totally 3 photos were taken - the one with Sachin, one pic with Shane Warne which is in another room at the MCG, and the photo with all 3 of them which is in his home. Then he had all the negatives destroyed so they wouldn't fall in the hands of the public. What a guy!

After MCG, by then it was about 4.30pm, jet lag was starting to kick in. So we came back to the hotel, crashed for about 2 hrs and then headed off to Chinatown for dinner. Given the extremely large Asian population here and we thought we would get really good Chinese food and we were right. We stopped at Kun Ming - the menu posted outside had a lot of choices for vegheads like us. Had a super dinner with Singapore noodles, stir fried veggies, Chinese tea for me and Australian beer for Raga. It was so yummy.

After dinner, we walked around that part of town. It reminded us a lot of Spain....open squares where people meet and mingle and have fun. Lots of restaurants, shops, people, noise, laughter....all in a clean, safe and secure environment. A very European concept. Took a long leisurely walk back to the hotel, breathing in the cool crisp night air. Am loving it.