Laid-Back Sunday in Melbourne

This morning reminded me of what it is sometimes like to be back in college. I left my room this morning to find that my neighbor had a large traffic cone sitting in front of his door - haha. From walking around outside, my guess is that it must have come from about 4 blocks away on Lygon St where they had been setting up for some sort of day-long festival. In any case, it made me laugh and reminded me of what used to be more frequent occurrences back at Penn State.

After church, I returned to the Graduate House to have the typical pizza Sunday brunch and then hopped on the computer and learned of the tragic earthquake in Chile. At the time I first saw the news, they still weren't sure whether Hawaii would be affected and the Australian Government had posted warnings for people to stay off the beaches on the eastern coast of Australia. I figured that Melbourne would probably be just fine since our coastline faces Antarctica. As it turned out, storm surges weren't an issue for either Hawaii or Australia. While this is good, the earthquake in Chile is still certainly very tragic.

Afterward, I talked with Mom for a while on Skype before getting down to business for the day. I was focused mainly on getting organized and taking care of a few additional school-related items. Altogether, it was a relatively productive day. The cloudy skies cleared around mid-afternoon and I decided to head down into the city to walk around for the afternoon/early evening. Sure enough, just as I left the graduate house, the skies turned overcast again. Oh well, at least it didn't rain!

I walked around the Southgate Arts and Leisure Precinct (just south of the Yarra River). I had been here before, but I hadn't walked around quite as much. I covered the area pretty well in search of somewhere to eat dinner. There were plenty of restaurants to choose from, but I wanted to stay away from Italian since I can have that up on Lygon Street any time. Eventually (after a long decision process) I decided on a French restaurant located along the river. I was impressed that this was one of the few restaurants in Melbourne that offer you complimentary bread with your meal. I had roast duck with an orange sauce served on garlic mashed potatoes with a salad. The meal was excellent and the salad dressing was unlike anything I had tasted before. It was light as though it were simply an olive oil dressing, but the flavor was much more distinct. Whatever it was, it was good! The duck was excellent as well and the orange really complimented the flavor. To finish things off, I decided to try their cheese plate for dessert. It was also really good! So, with that, I made my way back up to the Graduate House. Now, I have a few more things to do before I call it a night. I will go to the University of Melbourne tomorrow to start my experiments with Sandra and her group.