St. Kilda Festival (Port Phillip)

We heard in passing about St. Kilda Festival and thought we would take the tram to the southeast outskirts of Melbourne before getting on with our day. Much to our surprise, it turmed out that St. Kilda Festival is was a huge (460,000 people huge), all-day event with countless concerts, dance shows and performances running up and down the beach with views back over Melbourne. So what started as a morning pop-in saw us staying until the last show of the night.

Worth All 30 Hours (Melbourne)

Getting to Melbourne from CT was an exhausting trip. But, once we arrived we arrived in our "apartment in the clouds" we caught a second wind and were able to get out on the town, hitting up Gopal's (a Hare Krishna vegan restaurant), followed by a walk though the botanical gardens (maybe we fell asleep for a short bit on a small field), then by a stroll up to the Carlton neighborhood and a very nice al fresco Italian dinner. Which got us to 10pm, which is when we crashed.

By that next morning we were fully adjusted and had a full day in the city. This included Bruce at Hardware Society, a walking tour of Melbourne famous graffiti alleys, drinks on the Yarra ricer, some shopping and lunch at the Melbourne market, and a cricket match between Australia and England at the 100,000 seat Melbourne Cricket Grounds.

Cham-Wow! (Chamonix)

Today we saw our best shot at good weather in the French Alps so we took our chances, got up at 530 and drove 250km to Chamonix. What a gamble!

First, the town is amazing - like retirement location amazing. Amd second was what we were able to get in today because, as we learned, today produced the weather "everyone has been waiting for."

Our first stop was a mind-boggling, basically straight vertical cable car ride to a spurt of rock 13,000 feet high with stunning, up close views of Mont Blanc (tallest in Europe). Once you there, we had the opportunity to move about the frigid peak through tunnels, on platforms that jut out from the mountain, and over bridges and over metal staircases with only sky below.

We could have ended our day right there and been more than happy. Instead, we stopped half way down the return cable car ride and hiked three hours across the cliffs to what should have been a glacier field (it has receded dramatically). From there we took a cog train back down the mountain to Chamonix, bought some real macaroons and beer made with Alps water, and headed back to Lyon.

We will definitely be back!

2 Days in the City (Lyon)

We spent our first two days staying in Lyon exploring the city on foot and in its amazing clean metro system.

Highlights include the Basilica of Notre Dame de Fourviere (overlooking the city), the Gallo Roman museum and Roman ruins (also overlooking the city), the Old City generally, the Place Bellecour (the largest Plaza in Europe), the Lyon Beautiful Arts Museum (where we had one of our best meals so far), and the Croix-Rousse district (also overlooking the city).

As a bonus, Wednesday night we found a British pub to watch Tottenham establish themselves internationally in Champions League as a legitimate threat, beating perennial contender Dortmund 3-1.