Seeing the City

I imagine that any large city has tons of fun stuff to do. We’re finding that Melbourne isn’t lacking in that respect. Australian rules football is HUGE here. We went to a game on Saturday upon recommendation of the reception people at the hotel. The Melbourne Cricket Grounds hosts Footy, as they affectionately call it, in the Cricket off-season. The St. Kilda Saints vs. The Collingwood Magpies were local teams fighting for first place in the league. It was supposed to be a really tough evenly matched game. The Magpies SPANKED the Saints by 50+ points! There were over 80,000 people there. It was crazy! If you’ve never seen Aussie Football, Youtube it! We were lucky enough to sit in front of a fun helpful family who taught us the rules & attempted to explain what was going on. It’s very hard to follow, but those guys are extreme athletes thats for sure. The gist of it is practically anything goes, the field is round and can vary from 150 yards to 180+, you can’t actually throw the ball you have to either kick it or pass it by holding it in one hand and hitting it with your other fist and the fans are just as dedicated as we are back in the states!

On the afternoons that we have sun we’ve been doing lots just walking with no particular aim. We spent Friday afternoon walking in the Royal Botanical Gardens. When your there you can easily forget your in the middle of a very large city. We didn’t have the camera that day but we’ll be frequenting them a lot so I promise to take pictures soon
The Queen Victoria Market is a 3 block radius of fantastic local vendors. Pikes in Seattle comes to mind only this is bigger. It runs 5 days a week and will be where we get most of our food. We got Kiwis from New Zealand on Sunday the size of large apples for $1 ea. We also picked up some hot jelly doughnuts that were covered in cane sugar. I’m going to have to make sure we don’t get them every time we go. ☺

The food is great as well. While we were in the hotel with no kitchenette we made it a goal to eat small & have no leftovers, as well as try a variety of things. We’ve had Kabobs, a Turkish sandwich which was AMAZING. Good call Paul on the recommendation. We tried sausage rolls on recommendation they were, um, interesting. Our personal favorite so far and the only place we’ve been to twice has been Pie Face. A small coffee & pie shop with yummy coffee and rock your world meat pies. Think rich delicious handheld potpies but better than you can really imagine.

So everyone take a minute to look up some footy & tell me what you think. We’ve decided it looks like professional keep-away.

1. The boys @ the Melbourne Cricket Grounds
2.Declan enjoying lunch at one of the many sidewalk/alley way cafes
3.Our tiny home for the 1st week. And one very sleepy child :)
4. Declan and I went traipsing around looking for Federation Square, the home of Melbourne's information center & some of their many museums and show buildings. Currently showing things like The Work of Tim Burton and ABBA WORLD. yep, ABBA. We went 4 blocks the wrong way at first so when we finally found it we sat, had a treat and just looked around and appreciated the city.
5.St. Pauls Cathedral- one of the many beautiful historical buildings here in Melbourne