Filling in the missing days

Although I am a bit behind in posting these entries, I have been asked to post each day separately and to not waste time on all the meals we had (some great others only ok) and the mundane details of our travels, but rater to go over the fun and interesting parts with comments that are useful for future travelers.

So as I start in each city I will give a little overall impression of the time we spent there and the first entry about what we did.

It should be noted that we took several “day tours” with Gray Lines while in Australia (2-3 per city), in most cases (Little Penguins being the exception) the definition of day tour was a little exaggerated as these trips often required 200 – 500 KM (125 – 310 miles) travel each way. Thus we would drive for 1 – 3 hours with a break just to get to a site and then get up to an hour at the site to see it before driving back.

Melbourne – Impressions.

Unlike many other cities I have visited, Melbourne is a city that was predominately designed and planned. This means that, although some of the original roads had to be incorporated in the design (mostly diagonally to the rest) the city is set in a nice and easy to understand grid. Overall Melbourne is a very nice small city, with one end very much a University town and the other end a commercial district. The Queen Victoria Market was a lot of fun, and the tours that we took were wonderful (even if they were a bit colder than we anticipated).

7 October Melbourne

Today, while Ramit worked the rest of us went out to see the city. First, I left Marva and Amir at the Queen Victoria Market while I took Arbel to visit the Games Workshop store where I left him for a few hours of reading and learning. Then I went back to join Marva and Amir. Here is Marva with the various stuffed animals that were available at the market.

When the market closed, we went to pick up Arbel and to look around the mall where the store is located. The store is located in the Melbourne Central (the train station is on the lowest level of the mall. This mall was built around the old shot tower, yes this is where they used to make the shot used in the guns by dropping molten lead from a height of 50 meters into a trough of water and then sorting the round ones from those that were deformed. The mall was built around the building with a conical glass roof over the building.

In the evening we all went to have dinner at the college where they were having High Table, if you know the Harry Potter films it is sort of like that. All the students are at regular tables wearing robes while the faculty (and senior level guests) are sitting at the long table (usually on a raised platform - which is why it is called high).

Ramit and I got to sit at the high table while the rest of the group sat with students. Here we are all in our (loaned) robes after dinner.