Melbourne #2

If you ask FFM what his favorite part of our trip to Australia was he'll quickly answer, "the trams!"  Our transportation obsessed lad really enjoyed our main mode of conveyance around the city.

We made more trips on the classic City Circle tram, and one day asked a fellow tourist to snap a shot of us so we could compare our 2011 ride to our 2009 trips.  My, how he's grown!

One day, on our way to the grocery store for dinner supplies, we rode our tram to its terminus.  We had a very friendly tram driver (most of them were) and we were two of the only three remaining passengers left on the tram.  We got near our stop and had to wait for another tram to clear the station before we could get off.  While we waited the driver came out of his booth and asked if FFM would like to "drive the tram."  Boy, I think it rivaled Christmas morning!  He got to sit in the driver seat and push the red button that makes the "ding ding" tram sound.  Heaven for little boys!

There was even some time for kite flying at the beach.  A special treat, it's hard to fly kites in Colorado with our thin air and gusty wind.

Remember I said there's always something going on in Melbourne?  We were there during Fashion Week when waify girls and very well dressed folks abounded. There was a clear tented runway you could see right from the city sidewalk.

Everything looks good in Melbourne.  The architecture is amazing, bridges are never plain, and they light up their stadiums in clever ways... the LEDs of course change color and strobe patterns.

On our last weekend we journeyed to the Southern Ocean coast.  We'd driven the Great Ocean Road in 2009 so took the highway west and visited the Otway forest.  You can walk way, way, way up high in the trees on a skywalk and enjoy the forest and wildlife from above.  The walkways are metal grids so if you look down you can see straight through them.  FFM looked straight down, I did not.

Leaving the forest we headed out to the coast and caught a bit of the Great Ocean Road on our way to see the Cape Otway Lighthouse.  Even when it's chilly the coast is just beautiful.

The lighthouse was a stop requested by FFM.  We don't have any lighthouses in Colorado, so he's been anxious to see one in person (I guess he was too  young to remember the ones we've dragged him to in the past).

On our way to and from the lighthouse we saw more wild koalas than we have ever seen before.  So many that we lost count!  Most were snuggly and sleepy, but a fair number were clambering around being fairly active while munching on some eucalyptus leaves.

On our last full day in Melbourne we revisited one of our favorite spots, the Melbourne Museum.  There we learned about the roots of the city, saw the indoor/outdoor rain forest, and learned the FFM is four wombats tall.  Man, you just can't beat learning things like that!