Life in Melbourne

Mel has given us quite a bit of time off since i got here so that i had time to explore a bit in the first days.
My tasks throughout the week include playing with the kids and making sure they share all their toys :D, going to parks, helping clean up, bringing the kids to socatime joes, doing groceries, once i get used to reverse driving, picking up Wyatt from Kinder, so it's pretty easing going.
we've managed to open a bank account here and also get a library card for the library a 10 minute walk from their house.
We live in a neighbourhood called Malvern east which is in zone 1, which is the closest zone when paying for fare for the subway to get downtown. each neighbourhood has their own 1 or 2 roads of stores which is awesome. We live near Koomang road which is where the library is, grocery store, tones of asian places to eat, small grocery stores, clothes stores, pasterie shops, banks, there is everything. We also live near Waverly which we have not yet had time to explore.
On tuesday i had the whole day off so we headed downtown. it's about a 20 minute walk to Caulfield subway station, but it is at the center of a bigger hub of trains and right beside the Monash university. The other station we can walk to is Carnegie ( a 10 minute walk). The train then takes about 20 minutes to get downtown. Downtown we get off at central station and wandered the streets checking out cheap sushi places, indian, thai and indonesian yum... which i decided to mark with a legend on my map of melbourne for many pleasant returns.
They have great stores here that are all quite expensive but they are very fashionable here, plus have tons of surfing stores :). We ventured into many to keep warm since it was quite windy and cold out and we did not come prepared.
We then hung out at Federation square near Flinders station. There was a live big band playing that played songs from the sweet escape to classic oldies. After lunch we took the city tram, a free tram that goes around the city which consists of a rectangular grid. The tram even plays a recording telling you about all the buildings. We got off after doing the full loop and followed the Golden Mile Heritage Trail, which was on a map we had picked up at the visitors center. We proceeded to follow golden coins in the cement through the downtown which led us down cute little alleyways filled with coffee shops and chocolat stores, yum. The downtown here is quite beautifull, a mix of modern cool building and old buildings with gorgeous architecture.
We then headed trought china town, Greek town, down Lygon street until our feet were dying. We sat down for some sushi, 2 rolls and a miso soup for 5.50$ includin tax and all, c'était merveilleux. We joke about eating sushi here everyday it's so cheap.
We went downtown again on wednesday to see the welcome home parade of the olympic atheletes... which we missed, but we got to see the gathering after on federation square where they interviewed a few and then had a walk down the "red carpet" for autographs and pictures. Which we took tons of.. without really knowing who anyone was. We then lay around for a good hour in batman park i think.. or a park at batman and flinders st. Next we took the tram to melbourne university so Leslie could look for job information.
So, in conclusion Melbourne is such a cool city and there is still so much to explore.. i could just walk around downtown for hours looking at all the shops, architecture, and restaurants. Also, the kids are so cute and great to work with... oh and the parks are fun for me also :P... so superior to what we have in Canada.