A Country Dweller's City Experience

Dh & I had the opportunity yesterday to combine a necessary task with having lunch together in the city.

Spending time in the city, for us, is a rare thing indeed. We are country dwellers....semi rural really. I've had odd looks from those who don't know where we live when I talk about 'our town' because it sounds like we live hundreds of hours away from the suburbs which are just down the hill. Nevertheless Our Town is indeed it's own little hub of activity and everyone seems to know everything about everyone else. You can't get away with much at all! And we like it that way.

So...we get to the city and being the people watcher that I am there is much to see. Businessmen in suits entering fancy building lobbies. Uni students schlepping their way to classes. Well dressed workers with ID tags hanging around their necks, perhaps from the hospitals up in the top corner of the CBD. The well dressed up the Parliament end of town, to the less impressive statements made by those further towards mid-CBD. Dh commented that he is incredibly glad his city-worker days are well behind him. I think it would near kill both of us to travel the 1.5 hours it would take us to get in there every day. Could you imagine? Three hours a day on the train. People watching isn't that interesting! Dh was complaining when they had temporary lights between here and his office because a gum tree had ripped out half the road. "I had to wait for three changes before getting through!!!" was his constant lament for the few weeks before the road was fixed. His Dad just smiled indulgently...he travels an hour to get to work through many a set of permanent traffic lights.

My favourite part of the day was wandering through the city streets deciding what we felt like for lunch! Once we hit Little Bourke Street we knew. Yum Cha at the Shark Fin Inn. What other choice could there be...and the people watching continued there too! We began in an almost empty room and within 15 minutes the place exploded into a hive of activity. We ate well and enjoyed our walk back to the train station.

That's a whole other experience too. The underground stations in Melbourne are accessed via long, deep....long escalators. Dh was having a hard time with the height...long way up, long way down! Me...I was struggling with the angle. My eyes were doing different things to my ears and I just ended up shutting my eyes and being quite happy. Being on a different train line now, to when we were growing up, we now have to endure two escalator rides as the platform we needed to use was an extra level down. Oh the vertigo LOL.

It is always the most joyous thing to be driving back through the National Forest just before the town where Dh's office is. You can feel yourself relax and breathe a little deeper of fresher, cleaner air. It was a fun day together, but I do love Our Town!