March 8 (or is it the 9th) Melbourne

When we got off the train at Southern Cross station on Tuesday evening and got our first view of Melbourne there was definite disappointment in our hearts after having fallen in love with Sydney. Well, I'm here to report that with Australian cities it is quite feasible and even likely to be polyamorous. After two days of walking and touring the city, we've experienced the lovely Victorian city and find her to be vibrant, charming, quaint, beautiful and entertaining.

We started on Wednesday at the Victoria Library, a facility that rivals NY public library. I know that Gail would have loved seeing the domed reading room and the hub and spoke layout of the wooden reading/studying desks. There were some neat historical exhibits there including one about Ned Kelley the infamous Australian bush ranger, the Billy the Kid of this place. Could've spent hours at the library easily.

Jay and I split up for a while on Wed and I hopped on the free tourist bus service that navigates the city in a large irregular loop. It was a great way to get oriented and see many of the major sites without lots of walking. Saw Melbourne University, Bio21 - the big pharma research precinct, the Italian district, the amazing array of athletic facilities and of course the skyline from many vantage points. Got off at Queen Victoria Market only to find it was closed on Wed. Well this just afforded me the opportunity to wander some of the streets back down toward the city. Found this neat shop with these elaborate, Italian masks, the kind you would see in an Elizabethan era play. Took some pics and had a nice chat with the shop owner's sister who was minding the store.

Jay and I met up a bit later and we went to the Australian Center for Moving Image. It's a modern media oriented facility that both shows a variety of works from Australian students and provides a pretty sophisticated lab for making/editing video and film.

We decided to head to Lygon street for dinner in the Italian precinct. Found a nice outdoor cafe and enjoyed ourselves watching the people. The entire city has quite a European feel to it and the cafes, architecture and food selection enforce the feel. From there we hiked about a mile to Brunswick Street which is a more bohemian area and had our dessert course. Had to take a picture of the piece of black forest cake that Jay ordered. Quite teh presentation and he's made it last even to today with some remnant being in our hotel refrigerator.

Found our way back to the tram line and it was a short hop back to the hotel where we crashed at about 10 pm knowing that another day in Melbourne might not be quite enough with this new girlfriend of ours.