28 April, penguins and pizza!

After a much improved nights sleep for everyone we woke up to another lovely day and decided to head to St Kilda for some Sunday breakfast and a look at the markets that are held along the Esplanade on a Sunday morning.

Before departing our hotel we had looked up the trams and had figured we had to hurry to make the next tram but we should have enough time. Of course the tram was about 1.5 minutes early and we missed it by about 10 metres, necessitating a 25 minute wait at the tram stop.   We finally made it onto the tram and headed to St Kilda, keeping a hungry Astrid entertained with lots of sight seeing.  Once in St Kilda we wandered up and down the main street to pick our breakfast location. It was still early and relatively quiet.  We've eaten at a couple of the cafes before but we picked a different one that looked like it was quite popular and sat down to a nice hot breakfast.  Astrid enjoyed her babycino and some of our hot breaky and feeling much warmer and fuller we decided to check out the cake shops up and down the street.

There were plenty of great cakes to pick from and despite just having had a big breaky we figured we could stash some cakes in the stroller to take back for morning tea.  Astrid had her zebra with her, and zebra had a wonderful time picking out all the cake Astrid was going to eat. Cakes safely purchased we headed back to the esplanade for a look at the markets.

Despite it being well after 9am many stalls were only just setting up and it was very quiet. Quite a contrast to previous times we have been to the markets.  We did wander up and down and let Astrid have a bit of a walk but we didn't end up buying anything. There were a few cute things but we obviously weren't in a shopping mood. We did enjoy looking at the stalls and patting some cute dogs along the way and Astrid had fun having some shoulder rides and wearing Anto's hat. We had planned to walk down to the beach and have a play at the park but it was quite windy and looked like it would rain any minute, so we instead jumped back on a tram and headed back to the hotel.

Astrid found room for some of the left over spring rolls and Chinese take away from the night before and was looking quite weary so had a nap. The adults decided on some book reading in the warm, accompanied by some take away coffees from the nice coffee shop down the road.  After a couple of hours of rest it was time for our St Kilda cakes (very yum, but not quite Paris standard) and to head to the aquarium for the long awaited penguin visit.

We caught the train to the nearest station and still somehow ended up walking the wrong way to the aquarium despite having been there before and theoretically knowing where we were going.  We eventually made it and it was very busy and chock full of small (and loud children). It was quite late in the afternoon but we knew we weren't going to spend more than an hour or two there so we had plenty of time to look around.

First up were the penguins. The penguin exhibit is quite good, although when we first got there it was very busy due to a tour going through. Astrid was extremely excited to see 'big' penguins up close and we spent quite a bit of time watching them waddle around, clean themselves and generally be cheeky.  Here is where the photos get very dodgy as unlike most of the other people we don't use flash around animals and it was quite dark and contrasty.  While not the best shots you can see how big the King Penguins are and Astrid was very impressed with them. She also loved watching them dive in and out of the water and would have happily stayed and watched them all day.

We finally dragged her away from the penguins (pretty much kicking and screaming) until she discovered the rock pools she could play in, touching all the shells, sand and sea stars. That was a huge hit......toddlers, water and sand, what could be better? Again after quite a play we had to drag her away so we could let other kids have a go and see some of the other exhibits.

Next were the seahorses and weedy seadragons and then the big central tank with lots of fish and corals. We had fun watching some eels and big fish swimming around the tank and Astrid was quite impressed with how close she could get to some of the fish.  We then headed to the shark exhibits, which were extremely busy still. We spent quite a bit of time showing her the big rays and sharks swimming around.  Eventually the crowds thinned a little and we got a better look.  Again terrible for taking photos, but we had fun. Not as much fun as when we get to snorkel and dive with sharks, but not bad for a dry land adventure.

It was getting late but had finally quietened down so we decided on another visit to the penguins and rock pools. We caught the jellyfish exhibit on the way through and made our way back to the penguins.  They had started turning the lights down and the penguins were all starting to put themselves to bed. We had fun watching them get ready for their sleep and have their last swims of the day and got some slightly better photos of them.  After about half an hour more with Astrid's new favourite animal we let her have one more play in the rock pools before drying off and heading out for some dinner.

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We had a pleasant walk from the aquarium over the Yarra towards the Crown Casino complex. We stopped to take some photos on the bridge and enjoy the end of another lovely day. Astrid was getting hungry and we had promised her some pizza so we headed into Crown and tried to find the pizza place Anto and I had eaten at several years before and had fantastic pizza. In the end we couldn't find the one we wanted but settled on another place that looked decent. We all shared a lovely vegie pizza, not as good as the one we remembered, but Astrid certainly wasn't complaining.

We then had a quick walk around to show Astrid the lights and fountain in the atrium and headed back outside for some gelato.  Although none of us needed dessert we figured it was our last night in Melbourne and some icecream wouldn't go astray. We'd walked past a couple of nice looking places on the way in so selected some icecream and decided to eat outside and watch the people going past and the light show from the big gas burners. Astrid turned out to not be a fan of the gas burners but did love the icecream! While she has had plenty of icecream before this was the first time we had given her a cone.  It was a bit messy but worth it for the grins.

All getting a bit tired and cold we headed for the nearest tram and made it back to our hotel with only enough walking to burn off about one third of the icecream.  It had been another long day but Astrid was excitedly chatting about the penguins and telling us how we had all eaten icecream together, and how lucky she was.  Sounds like we got high marks for yet another day!

17 October - Pizza and Centre Pompidou

We awoke to another rainy, grey day. You really do need your umbrella here. The forecast was for heavy rain, so we decided to do some indoor activities. Since it wasn't raining too much. after breakfast we headed down to Jardin Des Halles to let Astrid have a play.

 It was fairly quiet, with only a few other kids. It would have been great except all the equipment was wet. It didn't particularly bother Astrid. She used her coat to sop up the extra water. After a bit of a play we decided to checkout the shops in the shopping centre next door, Forum Des Halles. It's quite a big shopping centre, all underground, with several levels and it is built around the metro and RER station. We found a cafe and had our morning tea of coffee and pain au chocolat. It is now at the stage where we are going to have to order two croissants, as Astrid doesn't like sharing and we barely get any. Upon departing the cafe, Astrid saw a large sign with a picture of a croissant and coffee, so she ran up to it, gave it a kiss and said 'yum'. Passers by were cracking up at her.

 We continued on with some shopping, and located Anto some boots. We think we now have everything we need for Switzerland. We have so far resisted buying too many things for Astrid. Anto keeps 'forgetting' where all the baby shops are located! We headed back to our apartment, and were relieved to have missed the downpour which occurred while we were shopping.

We decided to try the Italian restaurant below our apartment for lunch. We ordered a caprese di buffalo, a tomato, basil and buffalo mozzarella pizza. It was fantastic, and Astrid enjoyed it too. We will be going back another day as they have so many yummy things on the menu that we had trouble choosing. It's also particularly convenient being located 2 floors below where we are staying.

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For our afternoon activity we decided to check out Centre Pompidou. We had walked past the building a few times but hadn't been in. Centre Pompidou is a crazy glass building, with it's escalators, air-conditioning shafts and utilities pipes on the outside.

The glass elevator:

The building houses a big public library as well as the Musee National d'Art Moderne, which has a rotating exhibit of 65.000 pieces. Some of the hundreds of exhibits:

It was a really fun building to walk around. Due to having the stroller with us we couldn't use the escalators, as they were very steep and no strollers allowed. Instead we had to use the lifts. As all the lifts are external and glass you got a very good view of the city but it was a bit freaky.

 The Centre is only 6 stories high, but from the top viewing platform you can see straight across Paris. It shows how flat the city is, with just the Eiffel Tower in the distance and the hill of Sacre Couer, standing above all the other buildings.
The views across Paris:

We had a walk around the exhibits. There were lots of fun things to look at and a heap of exhibits. We could have spent more time there but there is only so long you can contain a baby in a stroller for.

After we had looked at most things we wanted to see, we headed back outside to the square in front of the building to look at the Igor Stravinsky fountain, which is a shallow basin of 580 square meters located in Place Stravinsky, between the Centre Pompidou and the Church of Saint-Merri. Within the basin are sixteen works of sculpture inspired by Igor Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring, and his other major works. Astrid enjoyed watching all the colourful sculptures, spurting water, but was again annoyed that she couldn't hop in the pond.

 Weary from another day of walking around, and accumulating even more blisters from our new shoes we had dinner back in the apartment. Tonight's dessert was another special from the Maison Collet boulangerie/patisserie, an apricot and cherry flan. I think there are at least 5 patisseries on our street, and we don't want to discriminate so we will make sure we frequent all of them and report back.