Melbourne

We arrived in Melbourne after driving all day on the Great Ocean Road. Without much energy and noticing everything in our section was starting to close down for the evening, we decided to go to a movie...Hancock. Yay...popcorn for dinner.

The next day, we didn't have much of a plan. We walked around and looked at different buildings in different sections of town. The buildings are really nice, fairly European in style. We tried to get tickets to Wicked and a circus to no avail, and then headed to the dome to watch the rising stars under 18 play Aussie rules football. It was pretty nice out, and we enjoyed watching them play. They don't wear pads, either punch or kick the ball to each other, and tackle each other. It looks like fun. We then got lunch, then walked around the shopping districts.

The following day, we walked to the market. This market had both clothing, both touristy and not (definitely less touristy than Sydney), and food. We enjoyed the market...especially Ed's bratwurst. We also walked around a lot of gardens and around the Melbourne Museum. We figured we had enough museums, so we didn't go in this one. Melbourne seems to be more of a city to live in, rather than visit doing touristy stuff. There aren't a ton of museums, but has lots of nice buildings. We ate dinner at a local brewery where Ed had a couple of pints and kangaroo filet and Jeanette had a chicken and cheese sandwich. It was nice to have good beer for a change, since most of the beer Ed has had so far in Australia is about as good as a Budweiser.

Today, we walked around the Royal Botanical Gardens, which were really nice despite it being winter. It was still really green, just not too many flowers. There is also a drought going on in Australia so there are water restrictions, which means most of the fountains were turned off. We went back to the market for lunch and dessert. We both had baked potatoes and donuts while Ed also had another brat.

We fly out to Alice Springs tomorrow and will be sleeping outside in the desert...we heard it's really cold - below freezing at night. Fun!!!