About a week ago Nadia and I arrived from a 3 night trip to Melbourne. It was our second trip there and it was generally made under the auspices of attending a wedding of one of Nadia's collegues. But really, we only spent about 4 out of the 72 hours on the wedding. The rest of the time we spent exploring some new things in Melbourne that we didn't get to see last time, and also re-experiencing some of the things that we really enjoyed from the last trip.
First of all, the wedding was really good and we had a lot of fun. And now on to the other 68 hours.
Melbourne is a great place if you like to eat and drink. There are restaurants and bars everywhere. There are laneways (think back alleys) that are dedicated to just about anything: breakfast, hiking equipment, jewellery, musical instruments, etc. So, we tried to explore a few new ones for food and you really can't go wrong. There are even some laneways that have been essentially set aside for grafitti. Some of it is really amazing. Melbourne is a city that seems to have embraced it's darker sub-cultures and incorporated them into the mainstream. As a result, it seems to me that there isn't so much of an us vs. them dynamic happening. So, we ate well and to work off the food we did a lot of shopping and exploring.
One of the 'new' items on our Melbourne agenda was footy. "Footy" aka Australian Rules Football, is the most popular sport in the country (in case you haven't been paying attention). It is an odd mix of soccer, rugby, American football (called "gridiron" here) and a prison break. We've seen it on TV but never in person. Melbourne is really the home of Footy. Prior to the AFL (Australian Football League) forming all of the teams were located in Melbourne. Only now is it really a national sport with two teams in Perth, two in Adelaide, two in Sydney, one in the Gold Coast (near Brisbane) and the rest, about 8 in Melbourne. There are two major stadiums in Melbourne. One is the Melbourne Cricket Ground (MCG) which holds about 100,000 and is the nations most iconic sporting arena. The other is Etihad Stadium, which is the only stadium in the southern hemisphere that has a retractable roof. There were no matches that fit our schedule at the MCG so we went to Etihad. As luck would have it, our local team, the West Coast Eagles, were playing the Western Bulldogs (from Melbourne). The Bulldogs won but it was a close game. The atmosphere was only so-so but considering that there wasn't much on the line for either team I'm not surprised. Also, there were only about 20,000 in the stadium that has a capacity of about 60,000. In any case, it was a new experience for us.
In general, Melbourne is a great city. It is very mature and vibrant. However, it's also quite well-worn, dirty and has a big-city attitude. Great place to visit but I'm not sure I'd want to live there.
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This is a big week for us and it is every year. This year it's just a little bit bigger though. Nadia had her birthday on August 5 (yesterday for us). And in two days Zaren and Cyrus are *gulp* turning 18. Wow.
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Last week we made a discovery in Perth that could potentially rival all others that have been made up to this point. While out shopping for groceries I was about to grab the same old sub-standard Australian bacon when out of the corner of my eye I spotted something. After very close inspection it turned out to be, wait for it, REAL BACON!
So, for the first time in almost two years we ate real bacon!
There is hope for this country yet.
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