Melbourne Sept. 22

I slept in till 8 this morning. That's 16 hours after I went to bed; but I was up for a couple of hours during the night.
It's Saturday, but I missed Thursday completely. Poof, it's gone.
Today was a beautiful day, high of 20, nothing but sunshine.
There is a train station at the mall near us. The train into downtown, or the CBD (central business district), as they call it here, takes 35 minutes, and costs 4 dollars for the day, and that includes all forms of transportation. It stops at Flinders Station, which is a beautiful old building, like Union Station in Toronto, only nicer.
There is also a Circle tram that loops around the CBD, and  gives a commentary as you travel. And it's free!
The tourist bureau is the best I have seen, anywhere. Very efficient and friendly. There are even tourist guides at some of the tram stops, offering assistance. Very impressive!
We spent some time at the Victoria Market, which has a great selection of sea food, meats, veggies, and fruit. Prices for veggies are high here. Half a pint of blueberries cost 4.50 dollars, one bunch of green onions 1.50, a head of ice berg lettuce, 2.00.
The meat selection is great; if I only had recipes for fresh goat or kangaroo.
Some of the stalls have staff yelling out their daily specials. It can get pretty noisy. One stall had a sign "We sell, not yell"
Food prices are generally high. A foot-long sub, at Mr. Submarine is 10 dollars. The one that really got me was the price of ONE donut at Crispy Cream was 2.50 dollars...for ONE donut. But you save if you buy a dozen for 19.95.
The cappuccino for 3.60 felt like a real bargain...and it was good.
We also visited the David Jones department store. It's like a real department store, think of an upscale Eatons. The first floor was nothing but perfumes, just like in Paris. Beautiful stuff, but I resisted the temptation of the 500 dollar sweater. It was interesting seeing the Christmas decorations. It's hard to think of Christmas in the middle of summer. Santa in red shorts.
My first impression of Melbourne was as a lovely cosmopolitan city. There is quite an Oriental presence, but few what we would call Afro-Americans. Lots of people on the streets, street performers, and lovely architecture.

Australia Sept 21, 2012

Well, we arrived in Melbourne!
We left for the airport on Wednesday, at 1:30 in the afternoon, and arrived in Melbourne at 10 am on Friday. Long trip, but actually, pleasant. Air  New Zealand is excellent. Even the food was good! The new personal entertainment features are great, although the choice of movies is not to my taste. I watched TV shows and listened to music.
The weather, in Melbourne, is similar to home, high of 18, mostly cloudy.
We are doing a home exchange, and it is great. The neighborhood is upscale, no monster homes, very nice, quiet, lots of gren space. It helps that spring has started, and lots of flowers. Our new "home" is very spacious and clean, and has a lovely garden.
The couple we are exchanging with left lots of provisions. An interesting feature is that there is no basement.
After we unpacked we decided to do some shopping. It's been a while since I have driven on the left side. Both of us started out by going to the wrong side of the car, but being university grads we solved that problem in no time.
The mall we visited is huge, twice the size of Lime Ridge. The big supermarket is Woolworth. We checked the store, but decided to shop after looking around. When we got back, both of us felt disoriented, because things weren't as we remembered them. I knew we hadn't slept much in two days, but this was weird. When we checked out I asked the lady if there were two stores, and there are two Woolworth supermarkets, close to each other, in the same mall!!
I was in India for over a month, and I only found a total of two small grocery stores, and here there are two big supermarkets in the same mall!!
I like this country.
After our shopping we, of course, couldn't find the car in the parking lot. What do you expect! Two sleep deprived tourists looking for a silver Mazda, license plate not remembered, in a huge parking lot. We did find it. Our other choice was to wait till everyone had left, and take the car left over.
Luckily it didn't come to that.
We drove home and I went to bed at 4, and slept till 3, when I started this blog.
It been great so far, and we are looking forward to our first trip into Melbourne later today.
Have fun
Ralf