Melbourne!

So in the middle of February, one of Greg's co-worker's Dave, asked if we wanted to go to Melbourne for a weekend with him. Um, yes? Turns out he's a platinum Hyatt Hotel member and he had a bunch of points about to expire so he had to take a three day vacation or lose them. Super fancy pants. So we were staying at the Grand Hyatt in the middle of the city and since he was wearing his fancy pants we got access to the daily hot breakfast buffett and evening Happy Hour, that only the high-rollers get. Dave is easily the best friend we have. Although, his platinum status just ran out, so that title is now up for grabs again. Sorry, Dave.

The first thing we did is we walked across town to the Eureka Tower, the tallest building in Melbourne, featuring the Edge Experience. The Egde is the highest observation deck in the Southern Hemisphere. We're pretty sure they built it about 2 meters higher than the one in Sydney just to spite them.  Here are a couple pictures from 88 stories up.

The stadium is the famed MCG, or Melbourne Cricket Ground, home of international Cricket matches and about 7 AFL games a week. I think it's the biggest cricket stadium in the world. Also, all the tennis courts you can see right by it? That's the Australian Open. Melbourne calls itself the "Sport Capital of the World." Please notice the use of singular for "sport."

After the Edge experience we went over to the Victoria Markets, a sprawling collection of food, crafts, clothing, jewelry, and random tourist stands. Most of it looks like "it just fell off the back of the truck." It was interesting.

This was the capital building of Australia briefly before Canberra was established.

You can't really tell from this picture, but this fountain is awesome! It was especially designed to represnt Australia. Thus around the rim of the bowl, spraying out the jets of water are individually carved paltypuses. Pretty sweet.

This is the national museum, which had some great exhibits (dinosaurs!) and featured some really cool architecture. We tried to get a good picture of the front facade, but it was way too long to get in one picture. The place was massive. We spent about three hours there and saw maybe 30% of it. What we did see was an exhibit on the human body featuring actual pieces of people's bodies. I now know what a pancreas looks like.

This is us and Dave in Chinatown. We had some absolutely fantastic dim sum for lunch.

I'm not sure how Dave pulled this off. We were posing for a picture, and he somehow managed to make it look like he was photobombing it. Well played, sir, well played.

Strangely, this place was also in Chinatown. We made sure to come back for dinner that night. Giant German beers, all the sausage and sauerkraut I can eat, and a live, in-house polka band. You can't resist that.

I'm not sure how this is possible, but that is all the photos we took.  I'll just have to tell you about the other awesome parts of Melbourne we went to, and next time we visit we'll definately take more pictures.  Because there will definately be a next time.

So anyway, one of the coolest things about Melbourne is that every street you turn down and alley that pops up has more, new exciting things to see.  It's an incredibly vibrant city.  Absolutely amazing food, eclectic shops, and funky bars around every corner.  And that's on top of the distinct districts of Melbourne that each feature a particular type of cuisine.  One such area is Carlton, which the Italian district.  We went their for dinner one night and enjoyed heaps of phenomenal pasta, bread, and wine.  Soooo good!  There's also the Greek district, which is along the water, and of course as we mentioned earlier, Chinatown.  The diversity, both in areas of the city and people that live there, and quality of food throughout Melbourne was incredible.  We can't wait to go back and enjoy more of it!