Melbourne, continued

I enjoyed an early walk by the river and coffee at one of Melbourne’s many fabulous coffee shops.

Then we started our day slow, walked down to Federation Square, where Claire and Joe went through the Race Horse Museum and Ava and I checked out the National Art Gallery. The first fllor was all Aboriginal works, many with poems written by Australian students at all levels. Incredible talent, both in the art of painting, sculpture and weaving and in poetry.

The Aboriginal works relayed stories and lifestyle of the peoples. In the other levels of the museum the collections were a mix, with a wide array of European influenced art.

Federation Square itself is a delightfully sprawling silver sort of monolithic, ugly but grows on you to be cool building – cool stone walking area. Comfy lounge chairs were set up in front of a huge TV screen for free viewing of the cricket game that was on. (Free movies and other events are held in the square.)

Near Federation Square was a cool playground so kids played there for a while, then we wandered to the Southgate area, a food/dining spot along the river. The food courts rock here – a wide array of cuisines: smoothies, pancake bar, sandwich/Panini bar, coffee bars, gelato bars, wrap bars, sushi, Chinese, Thai, burgers, on and on – alcohol available too. Kids got their pancake fix.

From there we wandered the river, stopped at the Crowne Entertainment facility to watch the Christmas light show – a brightly colored display with animation. Bright red reindeer, carousel that Santa appeared in, a big tree that changed colors to different songs, dancers and children popping out of the tree. Lovely and fun.

We traversed back across one of the many cool bridges to the hotel – many are pedestrian-only, with cool designs and/or sculptures nearby. One bridge commemorates the number of immigrants to Australia and from where they hailed.

The city as a whole seems to have lots of art throughout – i.e. we saw a bench in the form of a coin purse in one spot.

For dinner we headed to the Riverside, another food/entertainment area along the river. Lots of street performers around. We stopped at Greco and tried the two top items (per the waiter) – a mix of 10 antipasto items (loved the feta-stuffed peppers and olives and huge mushrooms). For our entrée we shared baby red snapper – very tasty. (BTW here in Australia entrée means starter, main is of course main dish.)

After the slowest dinner on the planet (didn’t know food could take even longer than in India) we simply HAD to have gelato…somewhere else of course. Honeycomb is the best. Not sure what’s in it, but it is delicious.