Another late start after another late night. We got back to the house last night about 1, so we slept in this morning. Instead of our usual breakfast of yogurt, granola, cheese and fruit, we decided to go out for brunch at one of the local Lebanese restaurants in the neighborhood where we are staying. It being New Year’s Day, it took a couple of tries to find an open one with god reviews, but after a couple of blocks of walking, we took a table at Tina’s. We ordered a sampler from their set menu and augmented with extra shish chicken and shish lamb (kebobs) and had a feast!

We topped off our transit cards for another day of unlimited access and jumped on a tram to downtown.

First stop was the large shopping mall where we saw the movie last night. The shops all closed at 7 and we wanted to make a few stops. After buying a few gifts and stocking up on Nespresso capsules (half the price at home – thanks to the exchange rate).

Next stop was the waterfront. Despite a light drizzle, the waterfront was pretty and we wandered along the water and into another shopping area. All the stores were still having sales and we were able to pick up a couple of souvineers. This was also the home of Melbourne’s  before heading back to downtown. We got off at St. Paul’s Cathedral and took a short self-guided tour. We also lit two candles. We crossed the street to Federation Park and caught our breath to plan dinner. We hadn’t eaten at a Vietnamese restaurant, despite the positive recommendations we received so we went back to our cell phones and found a highly rated restaurant that was less than a block away – adjacent to the really pretty train station.

The restaurant was called Pho Flinders (on Flinders Street). The pho came in four sizes. Ryan considered getting the largest size, but choose more wisely and just got a large. Ryan got the beef special, Holly and Heather split a bowl of beef and mushroom and I got a seafood special. It was delicious!! We also had a couple of really good summer rolls. Reinforced the value of finding really good, authentic ethnic food – will need to appreciate it when we can find it back home.

After dinner, we only had a to walk half a block to catch our tram back to the house where we spent the rest of the evening packing up and getting ready to fly to Sydney.