Day 9 - Exploring Melbourne on Easter Sunday

Despite being away from home, the Easter Bunny / Bilby found us on the road.

Today we trammed it back into the city and made our way to the iconic Melbourne Cricket Ground (MCG) and to the Australian Sports Museum. Unfortunately it was an "event day" so tours of the MCG weren't operating, but we managed to do a lap of the museum before it closed early for the sporting event on for the afternoon. The museum covered a number of major sports with their exhibits, but had a definite emphasis on cricket and AFL. The kids enjoyed the interactive exhibits where they got to shoot some hoops, kick some goals, shoot some arrows and ride laps of the velodrome "virtually". Ms4 in particular liked the bikes and ended up having to have her fingers physically prised off the handle bars and dragged away kicking and screaming when she wouldn't give up her spot for the line of people that had formed behind her. :-)

After the sports museum, we found our way back to the city on another tram and stumbled across one of the bustling laneways that we had walked through yesterday. It was time for lunch, and given how busy all the cafés looked, we didn't hold out much hope - but we found a table of five leaving one place so grabbed it. As we sat and looked around we wondered if we might be in for a long wait - people were crammed into this cafe. But we were pleasantly surprised and our food came out quite quickly - given how busy it was - and was a very enjoyable meal!

After lunch we stopped at a quirky shirt shop, and the kids all bought themselves a non-Melbourne logo'd souvenir of Melbourne.

From here we headed to the Melbourne Museum. Ms10 was keen to see Phar Lap, having recently read a story about the famous horse, and having done enough homework to know that's where we needed to go to see him. We enjoyed looking at dinosaur bones, lots of rocks from all around the world (including a sample of mudstone from the old Burwood Colliery in Newcastle!).

By late afternoon we were all starting to feel more than a little weary, so headed for "home". Once home we realised we were all too tired to eat out, so hopped online and ordered pizza to be delivered. I can't believe we are in Melbourne and had pizza for dinner!! Oh well, as I've said to the kids a few times over the last few days - if we don't get to see and do everything we want to see/do - then it just means we need to come back another time!

We've packed our bags, ready for heading out of the city tomorrow morning. Bye Melbourne - it was fun. I know we'll be back.