We are sitting at a wonderful outdoor Italian restaurant in Lygon St in the Melbourne suburb of Carlton. The sky is a deep and glorious blue and the sun is shining; temperature high 70s with no humidity.  The Bruschetta was delicious and a seafood risotto and fresh rockling fish dish are on the way. Choosing this particular restaurant was anything but easy. Lygon St is Melbourne's own Little Italy, a long boulevard of countless Italian restaurants, food shops, boutiques and cafes.  This is such hard work and we're hardly having any fun at all. 

After yesterday exploring the bustling downtown area, it's nice to come out to a quieter part of the city. Out here is the Melbourne Exhibition Centre, a stunning building that was built in 1880 for the World Expo and is apparently the largest wooden structure in the world. It is one of the few remaining old buildings in Melbourne that date from around this time. Most of the city's architecture is very modern. The contrast between the new and very futuristic Melbourne Museum and the older exhibition building next door to it is marked. Both sit alongside Carlton Gardens, a quiet and peaceful park in this northern part of the city.

La Notte has served us an excellent lunch, so progress this afternoon will be a little slower. I wonder if there's a good Gelateria up here. Let's go and have a look.

No Gelateria in sight, so it's off to one of the many cafes that pack the alley ways between the main streets for coffee and cake. I know, I know, it's a very hard life, but someone has to do it.   

Popular posts from this blog

Image
The news of the Chilean earthquake as we wake next morning includes tsunami warnings for the whole of the east coast of Australia. This is the day we have planned to go diving. We could be in for an interesting day. Although we have another early start, our hotel is only a two minute walk from the Reef Fleet Terminal where we catch our boat. The Big Cat Green Island boats take you about an hour offshore to a small rainforest covered island in the middle of the Great Barrier Reef. It seems that the only consequence of the devastating events in Chile has been a 'King Tide' here. There are one or two minor floods in Cairns itself and almost no beach left to sit on once we reach Green Island as it's high tide, but things return pretty much to normal by 11:00am as the tide begins to go out. The boat provides a pretty good buffet lunch, drinks and snacks all day, a semi-submersible trip which gives a fabulous view of the reef's marine life, a glass-bottom boat and all the...
Read more
How best to spend our 'extra' time in Perth was not a difficult decision. We barely scratched the surface of Kings Park yesterday. Today we went to one of the non-Jacobs Ladder entrances on the western side of the city - an altogether easier entry point.  It's Monday so most people are at work. This huge space is almost deserted and we have a chance to walk round much more of it. Most of the park is actually an enormous botanic garden. It is broken up into dozens of separate areas all linked by attractive walks and pathways.  Each mini-park within the park features all the flora and fauna from a different part of Western Australia. Given that WA is larger than Texas and Alaska put together, that's a lot of botanic garden. The two main routes or walks around the whole thing are 'Lover's Walk' and 'Law Walk' - the first dovetailing neatly into the second......'twas ever thus! It's another glorious day naturally, the temperature hitting 31c by e...
Read more

Sydney

Image
We have arrived in Sydney at a hotel called Sir Stamford on Circular Quay. We were pretty confident about what to expect just from the name - charm with a slightly old-fashioned look and feel - perhaps a gently down-at-heel country house. In fact the hotel has turned out to be delightful. The staff are friendly and helpful. The furnishings and decor hark back to the elegance of Edwardian England and we immediately feel at home. Perhaps that's because we have a rather typical English summer's day - grey skies with drizzle! We have used our brollies for the first time this trip. Weather forecasts say we'll have much the same tomorrow followed by two glorious sunny days. Into every life a little rain must fall! Our room was exactly what we ordered this time, a large comfortable room with a good seating area, king-size bed and a large modern bathroom with bath and shower. It was also blissfully quiet. We are a short walk - about 100yds - from the steps of the Opera House, so...
Read more