More Melbourne

G'day again!!! They actually say that here. . . all the time! We're leaving Melbourne this morning so we've repacked but seem to be having a lazy start. My main fear is that I have to get out of this city -- driving. They have a really interesting way of making right turns here because there are tram cars in the middle of the road. The first time I noticed it, we were walking along the sidewalk and we had to stop so I could watch. There's a car-sized rectangle painted on the road on the left side within the intersection. If a car wants to make a right turn and the tram is around, it drives up to that rectangle and sits there with all the other cars going all over in the normal way. Then, the weird part is that the light goes red and the car makes its turn! I've watched this happen a couple of times but I'm still not totally clear how the driver knows what to do so I told Jay to try to route us out of the city without having to make any right turns. He worked on that last night while I wrote in my journal. He thinks he has that figured out, so we'll see. Keep all fingers and toes crossed so I don't hit anything!

We went to the Botanic Gardens yesterday and walked around for about an hour and a half. It is a huge "garden" and we wanted to see the names of all these amazing trees we've been seeing everywhere. They really do have the most interesting trees! My favorite is the wattle tree. . .  and since it's spring here, this tree is in bloom and it is incredible. The entire tree is covered with fist-sized puffy balls. The best picture we have is one with all yellow blooms so I don't know whether they are all yellow. I also bought some spices at a great spice shop buried down an alley here. It is called bush pepper and has wattleseeds as part of the mixture. It also has desert tomatoes ground up as well and I tried eating those too. . .  great flavors when all together. Very pungent. I bought several tablespoons in case anyone wants to try it.

Well, I better sign off. Good luck to the FSO tonight for its opening performance of the season!!!! I'll be thinking of everyone!!