Back in Melbourne: 8. St. Kilda Adventure Playground in French!

The St. Kilda Adventure Playground was definitely one of G and L’s favorites in Melbourne, but during the week it didn’t open until 3:30 pm.  We headed over again one afternoon, shortly after it opened.  The kids had been counting down the minutes! 🙂

While we were there, we heard several kids speaking French. After a couple of “bonjours,” G was off to play with them, using both French and English.

L wanted to work on some of his trampoline stunts before joining the others.

After the kids played and Mike and I chatted with the parents for a while (they just moved to Melbourne from France in September!), we headed to Seven Apples for ice cream. It’s definitely one of our favorite ice cream shops!  Grace had the lemon sorbet, Leo and Mike had Bounty (which was coconut with chocolate swirl–so good!), and I had the always delicious cookies and cream.

 

Back in Melbourne: 7. State Library of Victoria


The kids and I took the tram to the State Library of Victoria one afternoon and had a great time riding the tram and exploring a gorgeous library!

Near the elevators, we saw some historical photos.  We realize now that we have no idea who the people are as we were too busy taking pictures! 🙂

Nonetheless, in the two separate pictures below, we have a puzzle/song for you!

4 of these guys belong together; 4 of these guys are kind of the same, but 1 of these guys just doesn’t belong here. Now it’s time to play our game. It’s time to play our game! 😉  Of course our little picture game is a play on the old Sesame Street classic!

In case you didn’t figure it out, the smiling gentleman in each picture is L! 🙂

We’d seen video footage of the beautiful dome in a travel video about Melbourne, so we were looking forward to seeing it in person!  It’s located in the La Trobe Reading Room.

We spent some time admiring the room and then sat down at some desks to do some drawing. The kids were particularly interested in the “pop-up” desks that functioned as small drafting tables. 🙂

There are several galleries with both permanent and temporary exhibitions. We were interested in finding and having a look at a miniature library created by David Bryce and Son (c. 1895). The tiny bookcase contains twelve miniature reference books, including religious texts, dictionaries (including a French/English one), and a volume of poetry. Those are G and L’s fingers in the picture to give some perspective!

This beautiful staircase goes up to one of the dome room balconies but isn’t available for public use.

Here’s L posing like one of the statues.

As we made our way up to the high floors, we had different views of the dome and reading room. Can you see the section below where people are playing chess?

There was an absolutely stunning stained glass window of Shakespeare on the 6th floor.

Standing in front of the entrance to the library.  We found out later that the statue behind the kids is of Redmond Barry (1813-1880), who was a judge on the Supreme Court of Victoria and instrumental in the development of the State Library of Victoria.

On our way to and from the library, we passed by the wonderful smell of roasted, sugary nuts and overheard the people working at the Chooh La La cart speaking French.  We had to stop. 🙂 We spoke with them in French, they offered us a sample, and we bought a small bag of the deliciously sweet and toasty almonds!  They also were super nice about having a picture taken with G and L. It’s so fun to continue to be able to practice our French language skills around the world!

While I enjoyed people watching on the tram ride back to our apartment, G and L enjoyed playing a game on G’s tablet.

 

Back in Melbourne: 6. Montalto and Flinders


We met Delia, Jeff, and the kids one afternoon at Montalto, a vineyard and olive grove, restaurant, and sculpture garden on the Mornington Peninsula, about an hour south of Melbourne.  It’s a beautiful area full of gorgeous landscapes — rolling hills, lots of trees, and vineyards.  The land where Montalto and its sculpture garden are reminded me just a little bit of the Minnesota Landscape Arboretum, although the former has a vineyard and the latter has more land and gardens.  Maybe it was just the feel of it. 🙂 Anyway, we enjoyed a lovely, leisurely lunch and roaming around the sculpture garden.

Look out! There’s a GIANT mosquito behind you!!
The official name of this one is: L’Arc de Vie
“All the world’s a stage…” Cool stage sculpture with metal curtains! Is L on an invisible stage or is is he flying through the air…
This was one of my favorites! Too bad it’s not real ice cream!! 🙂

Yay! A picture of all of us after a fun afternoon together! 🙂

While Delia, Jeff, M, and T headed back to Melbourne, we headed to Flinders, which wasn’t too far away, to check out the beautiful view of Port Phillip Bay, roam around the village, try out another playground, and, of course, have some delicious ice cream! 🙂

Although we didn’t have any swimming or snorkeling gear with us, the area under Flinders Pier is known by snorkelers for being a great place to view weedy seadragons! Maybe next time we’ll have to have a look! 🙂