Melbourne

Fri., Nov. 8 - We spent the day Friday exploring the city of Melbourne.

Melbourne is in the Australian state of Victoria, where we are now 16 hours ahead of Pittsburgh time.

The first place we went was Federation Square, which is a big hub of cafes, shops, a visitor center, train station, and is very near the bridge that goes over the Yarra River.

All of the large cities in Australia are on rivers or waterways: the harbour in Sydney, the Brisbane River in Brisbane, the Swan River in Perth, the Torrens River in Adelaide, and the Yarra River in Melbourne.

There are always very vibrant and dynamic happenings along the rivers.

After we walked around Federation Square and took a stroll down by the Yarra River, we boarded a sightseeing bus and took a tour around the city. The city of Melbourne has a lot of traffic and is very congested. Not my favorite Australian city. Something unique to Melbourne is their alleyways, lanes, and little streets. Every street here in the downtown area near where we are staying has the name of a "little" street in addition to the regular street. For example, there is Bourke Street and then there is Little Bourke Street. Then the next street will be Collins Street, and the next street after that is Little Collins Street. There also are narrow alleys that contain a number of shops and are a beehive of activity. We even saw a wedding taking place in one of these alleyways. There is no vehicular traffic in these alleyways. They are purely pedestrian.

There are lots of Christmas decorations up in Australia. I've been meaning to mention that. Since they don't have Thanksgiving here as a reference time frame for starting with Christmas decorations, they apparently just start with the Christmas decorations in early November.

There is a big department store downtown called Myers that had big Christmas window displays. There are familiar fast food places in Australia; we've seen McDonalds and Subway all over. Less frequently, we've seen Dominoes and Pizza Hut. There also is Burger King, although it goes by the name of Hungry Jack. It has the same logo and menu, though, as Burger King. There is something here called vegemite. It is a spread that you put on bread, like maybe toast, butter, and vegemite. It was described as a salty, less sweet marmalade. An advertisement said that you should pinch your nose when you take the first bite to lessen the intensity of the taste. Well, that just makes me want to run right out and buy some. The downtown streets of Melbourne are always full of people. Even at 11:00 last night when we arrived, there were many, many people out on the streets. The sidewalks are very wide, and some streets are shut off to vehicular traffic, and are just open to trams, streetcars, and pedestrians. There are many, many places to eat and one would not have trouble finding good food in Melbourne. Of course, if you still can't find something that suits your palate, you could always go down to the local Woolworth's grocery story (presumably no relation to the five and dime) and buy yourself a jar of vegemite. No worries, mate!