Cricket and Chinatown

After our relaxing day yesterday we were keen for a bit more activity today. We had decided earlier in the week that we were going to take a trip on the free city circle tram line, which gives you a guided tour of some of the sights on the periphery of Melbourne‘s city centre. The journey took about an hour and didn’t really show you a great deal. I’m not sure we expected much more, but it was nice weather and a free ride all the same!! We had also decided we were going to get a meal in Chinatown (does every major city have a Chinatown these days?) as we haven’t had a Chinese meal in ages. However, it was pretty disappointing. The food wasn’t well cooked and tasted pretty bland. I finished everything on my plate as always but was hating every mouthful. Oh well, considering food prices are way more expensive here and we only spent the equivalent of £10.50, I guess we can’t really complain too much. To cheer ourselves up (you can get really down on 6month holidays you know ;) ) we stopped for some drinks in Mrs Palmas pub - Victoria’s only microbrewery - which sells drinks produced within the state of Victoria. We stayed around an hour before heading to the MCG (Melbourne Cricket Ground) to watch Victoria play Western Australia in the Sheffield Cricket Cup. Today was the third day of their four day match. The MCG has the capacity to hold 100,000 people, but today there were only around 500 fans inside. Surprisingly there was actually a considerable amount of noise at the key moments, probably testament to the great acoustics within the stadium. For all the geeks, watching the cricket today meant that I actually have watched more live cricket this year than live athletics. Don’t worry though, it doesn’t mean I’m not an athletics fan anymore, just that I‘ve been a busy one.


Our ride!

Andrea loving the cricket!

Full house

So today was the last time we went into Melbourne City Centre as tomorrow Andrea has a couple of sessions to do and we are going to stay around St Kilda area. I don’t think it’ll be the last time we come to Melbourne though as there is so much to do here. However with the list of places we wish to visit increasing all the time, we can envisage it being a long time before we return…