Sports Mad Melbourne

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Greetings from Melbourne, well really from Kings Cross in Sydney as it's a week later but you ken what I mean.

We arrived in Melbourne to drop auld Bertha off at the car hire place and after driving around the airport for ages we finally found the shop. I'll not go into details here (as it makes me dry retch even thinking about it) but needless to say emptying the chemical toilet wasn't the best thing we've done on the trip, actually it may have been the worse if it hadn't been for that night with the cockroaches, but that's another story....

Anyway Melbourne, a great place, well I though so, Fiona wasn't as keen. It reminded me of Glasgow (note/question to self: is there any place in the world that doesn't remind you of somewhere in Scotland?) It's mad about sports, arts and shopping, everyone you walk past is a total fashionista, and they all look the same with their quirky 'individual' style.

As for sports, 10 out of the 16 AFL teams are from here, they have a rugby league (NRL) side even though that's generally only played in Queensland and New South Wales, it's home to the biggest horse race in the country (Melbourne Gold Cup), the annual Australian Grand Prix is held here (Albert Park, which, incidentally, was about 2 mins from our hostel), and the Australian Open Tennis is held here too!!

On top of that the MCG, the home of Cricket and Football in Australia will host the 2006 Commonwealth Games, it's currently getting it's capacity increased to 90,000 and regularly gets 78,000 to watch the biggest footy games.

It's a busy city is Melbourne, real arty too, we were staying in Parhan about 30 mins from the city and in a real cafe culture sort of place, it was close to the beach at St Kilda so we made a couple of trips down there.

We didn't do anything spectacular in Melbourne, just enjoyed it's sights and excellent social life, it was really cold down that way and snowed one day we were there, nothing mental like, it didn't lie or that but it was headline news.

I can't really think of anything else to tell you just now, if anything springs to mind I'll add it at a later date, if not then this is your lot.

Adios.

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Photos

The Eternal Flame War Memorial
at the Botanical Gardens, city skyscrapers in the background

Both sides of the Yarra
The City

and the fabulous MCG
The Melbourne Cricket Ground, home of test match cricket and the AFL final.

Andrew in Federation Square
The funky waterside part of the City Centre

Fiona in Federation Square
with Flinders Street and the city behind.

Old and new architecture blends beautifully
and the famous Melbourne Trams run right through the middle

What's the time Fiona?
Andrew in the Botanic Gardens

Luna Park
and it's famous entrance

The stunning St Patricks Cathedral
...it's one of ours.....

the beautiful tabernacle
of St Patrick's.

Fiona in the conservatory
of Fitzroy Gardens

The Rod Laver Arena
showcourt for the Australian Open Tennis series.

Comments

[atanur]

cool
hey u guys have taken really good shots of melbourne. Can u guys take pictures of like those beach houses? it would look mad