March 26th, 2006 - A whole lot of Yarra

Another weekend bustling with activity from the Commonwealth Games, meant that we had to stick around the city to soak in any festivities. After a relatively laid back Saturday with our traditional market shop, we spent most of Sunday walking down the Yarra river through the city and out the other side. The Yarra is the entry point into the city and although not a glorious harbor like Sydney (Nothing on the Port Phillip Bay waterfront is particularly striking), the Yarra provides a nice quaint river flowing just outside of the CBD for tourist boats and restaurants. It would be comparable to the Lachine canal back home, except more lively. Along the edges are nice restaurants, the Crown Casino, the Convention centre and exhibition center and further along its length the Alexandria gardens and all of the sports complexes that are found in it; The Melbourne Cricket Ground (MCG) - Opening Ceremonies, The Vodofone and The Rod Laver Arena - Australian Open. It was a beautiful sunny afternoon and we just kept walking the length of the river. The last event of the games was a cycling competition through Alexandria gardens and so we took in the race at several different spots down the course through which the bikers had to complete ~50 laps. We grabbed a cold drink three quaters of the way through our adventure in a small diner but when it finally came to turning around, we couldn't believe that the bikers were still racing after over four hours on the course at car speeds! The ambiance was particularly neat because all of the helicopter media coverage over the grounds. Overall, a nice relaxing weekend topped off with a couple of Magnum bars after a well deserved trek.