Digesting Australia's 2nd Largest City: Melbourne

Bodie had all-day meetings in Melbourne for the earlier part of this week, so we joined him and stayed where he did for the 2006/2007 deployment; the Metropole. The Metropole was fabulous with a great staff that remembered Bodie, and best of all, a pool! Bodie also wanted to take us to his favorite eatery from the deployment; Jim's Greek Tavern.

Jim’s was a great feast for us all on Sunday night. Hurrying and hurried waiters who loved yelling at each other in their native tongue, and a whole lot of oil, salt, lemon and rosemary added to the experience. But it was missing one thing and that was a menu. This was no big deal though, we just nodded or shook our heads when asked whether we liked fish, beef, pork, octopus, saganaki, dips, lamb etc and the waiters kept bringing out the goodies until we nearly exploded. It was just like in the movie 'Big Fat Greek Wedding': caramelised scallops a-sizzle in battered old fry pans, juicy lamb tossed with onions, slices of charred, gorgeously pink octopus, and a whole grilled whiting, plump and sea fresh.....I believe it was Brendan who finally yelled stop! While in Melbourne, we also enjoyed other ethnic dinners from Ethiopia and China.

The Melbourne metropolitan area population is approximately 4 million and serves as the state capital of Victoria. It is located at the mouth of the Yarra River and on the northern and eastern shorelines of Port Phillip. Melbourne was founded by free settlers in 1835, 47 years after the first European settlement of Australia, as a pastoral settlement situated around the Yarra River. And then someone let in too many good chefs.