On Friday morning, October 15th, Ben and Manda flew to Melbourne for a long weekend.  We stayed in Toorak with Ben's cousin Christina, which was a very convenient location from which to get to the city.
We arrived at about lunchtime and after drying ourselves off from the rain which accompanied us into the city from the airport, we spent about 3 1/2 hours that afternoon walking along Chapel St (runs south-north, crossing Toorak Rd) looking in the shop windows.  We hardly went into any shops as most of the stuff was too way-out or too expensive or synthetic but it was interesting to look.  We walked back to the flat through the back streets of Toorak, part of the way along a cycle path on the south bank of the Yarra River.  When Christina finished work we went to a Japanese restaurant in Albert Park, (west of Toorak, south of the city centre), for noodles for dinner.
The next day we went to Prahran Markets with Christina to do her weekly shopping. Then, after having bagels for breakfast at a little cafe on Greville St, Prahran, we went into the city to wander around. It was really sunny and we spent most of our time wandering around outside so we got a bit burnt.  Our first stop was the Royal Botanic Gardens.

	Close by is the newly restored Melbourne Observatory which was closed in 1944. We could only see the outside of the buildings but reading about the work that used to be done there was interesting. We also took a quick walk around the Shrine of Rememberance and La Trobe's cottage which was closed.
Our next stop was Southbank/gate (we couldn't work out which it was) which is a newish shopping/restaurant development on the southbank of the Yarra River. That wasn't very interesting. We did find Ben a satchel - his birthday present - which we'd searched fruitlessly for the day before. We were getting hungry by now but we couldn't even see suitable places to eat. So we walked across the river towards the city centre. Despite the fact we'd had Japanese food the night before, we liked the look of a little Japanese noodle restaurant we passed and got lunch there.
After that we did a bit more window shopping and got the tram up Swanston St to Daimaru. Ben spotted an apartment building, Republic by Nonda Katsalidis, on La Trobe St which we walked up to and we also had a look at the Commonwealth law courts. From there we got the tram back down to Swanston St to look inside Storey Hall, part of RMIT.
	We also went to the library to see the domed reading room. There are rows of desks, with those green shaded 'accountant's' lamps, radiating from a central point like spokes on a wheel, and about three floors of books lining the walls around them. The dome is incredibly high and the room looked like a great place to sit and read. There were lots of stressed-looking students there..
That afternoon we also went to the Carlton Gardens which were very popular for wedding photos or actual ceremonies - we saw at least 5 parties there. (Altogether that day we saw 11 weddings). There's a huge fountain in front of the Royal Exhibition Building, which is being restored, and we didn't get a good look at them until the next day, because of the brides/grooms etc swarming all around the fountain. The building dates back to the international exhibition in 18-something, the same event for which the Eiffel Tower was built. The new museum is being built behind that.

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