The Marshalls take Melbourne, Part 2

The adventures continues...

Our last post about Colin's mom's and brother's visit focused on things we did outside of Melbourne proper. Braving winter, most of our time in the city was spent inside, focusing on the most distinctively Melbourne things we could.

Warm drinks

Once again, Melbourne has been rated as the world's most livable city by some people who think one can be objective about such things. They claim that the rating is based on transportation, crime rate, etc.

But the real reason is Melbourne's finely-crafted elitism about coffee. There is lots of excellent coffee, and coffee pride, but people are pretty low-key about it. Melbournians know their coffee's great, so they don't need to rub it in.

So we made sure to take M&P out to one of the fancier coffee places, called Seven Seeds. Here they are, armed with their coffees:

On the other side of the table was Naomi, along with her cousin Paul and his girlfriend Erica. P&E came to Melbourne for the weekend, as part of a larger Australian trip.

Notice the cartridge container holding the menus.

Jumping ahead a bit, here's what one drinks when it's too late in the day for coffee:

Victoria Parliament Building

As it happened, M&P&P&E's overlapping weekend also overlapped with Open House Melbourne, when a number of buildings were open to the public. We stopped at a few, the most exciting of which was the state parliament building. We waited in line for about an hour, entertained by queuing Aussies (two of whom explained cricket and footie to M&P), and a wandering state official, in the suit below:

The wait was worth it, though. We got to sit in both chambers of the parliament, both of which were very nice. Here's Peter in one:

And here's our guide (and his friendly co-guide, who kept us moving from room to room) in the other chamber:

Red and green - nice color-coding.

We all took pictures:

Footy!

Since before our arrival in 2011, people told us that we had to go to an Australian Rules Football match. We would tell people that neither of us were especially into sports, but nobody seemed to think that was relevant. M&P's visit was the perfect excuse to go.

We braved the (slightly) rainy and (a bit more than slightly) cool night, walking to the Melbourne Cricket Grounds along the river:

Equipped with ponchos, we lucked into being just out of the rain. Here are two happy Marshalls:

Colin's most common reaction throughout the game was, "wait, that's legal?" Apparently, most things are legal (according to one source: if the ref. isn't looking, everything is legal). 

It was a lot of fun. We saw the Carlton Blues defeat the Richmond Tigers. Colin was a bit disappointed, since he has some default inclination towards any cat-themed team. Getting home, mom found the Blues' song on Youtube. 

If you're wondering what the game looks like, here's a video of the two teams. It's from this year, though not the match we saw. But Carlton wins.

Desserts

Melbourne is not especially known for its desserts, but it does them pretty well (as we've documented ad nauseum in earlier posts). M&P tried several places on their own, and got to experience a Lamington.

We took them to our favorite cake shop on Acland St, Monarch. Monarch features lots of 1980's style magazines, and a viciously good Kugelhopf:

Our final night was again dessert themed. We were all sad that the visit was ending. So we ate desserts from Chocolateria San Churro (a chain dessert place that we've found pretty reliable), and watched some Olympics.

Hard saying goodbye... why couldn't the Pacific be 1/2 the size? 

Still, there's a lot to be said for getting perspective about how lucky one is. We're lucky to have such fantastic families, and to be living in a fantastic city. Not getting to have both all the time makes us appreciate them all the more...