I’m discovering Melbourne step by step these days with Sven, Kevin and Rajiv. It’s great to have them here.

My friend Kevin, always keen to sniff out the newest exhibitions, found this great show about early fashion photographer Edward Steichen in the National Gallery of Victoria. They also run an exhibition called MELBOURNE NOW, concentrating on local artists. I will come back to this.

We walked along the South bank of the Yarra river, along some of the main high risers and a number of bars.

The area was once full of factories and abandoned sites, until a recent urban development plan revitalized it. Now it’s a nice stroll, and we found this cool little bar underneath one of the pillars of a Yarra river bridge.

On Friday night we went out. We met with Rajiv’s friend Michael, who worked in Dubai, then travelled through Asia and as now just started a job in Melbourne, and his friend Colin, who got us into fabulously yummy ShanDong MaMa.

We then went on to down some beers at the Collingwood watering hole Sircuit Bar.

Finally we danced away a few calories at the Peel, a fun little club with great music to dance to, from Madonna to Gaga… The Miami Dance Remix of Don’t cry for me… set me on fire, after a month in Argentina.

Saturday we got up quite late and walked through St. Kilda over to the beach, to have a look at the enormous Port Philipp’s bay.

It’s a huge body of water – 2000 km² and 264 km of shoreline – right on Melbourne’s door step. We would only grasp its expanse the next day when we drove down to the ferry over to the other side.

St. Kilda is like a nice little beach resort in that part, surf shops, restaurants, bars and a little fun fair called luna park. We found a great vegetarian & vegan place, Sisters of Soul, for a well deserved rest – and fantastic Papaya salad…

We didn’t go out Saturday night – we were still retired from the night before, and we were preparing to leave early for our trip along the Great Ocean Road on Sunday…

More on that soon, I was out of a stable wifi for some time and need to catch up with the blog….