MELBOURNE - our home

OK, we're back from France and my old blog - Leaping Leon's French Fancies comes to an end. Sue always was ambivalent about the title but that's life.

Photo of Charles Condor, Australian impressionist's painting of Mentone pier.

This blog will give an insight to our home of Melbourne and the surrounding suburbs plus the regional cities within Victoria.

Australian impressionist, Tom Roberts' painting of Mentone beach.

We live in the bayside suburb of Mentone - Winipedia describe our suburb as, "Mentone was originally founded as a resort town named after the Italian spelling of the French town Menton. In order to keep with the Italian resort theme many streets in Mentone were named after Italian cities for example, Cremona Street, Florence St, Venice St and Milan St. The development of Mentone began in the late 1800s.
Mentone has now developed into a middle income suburb, with areas of the suburb somewhat exclusive with a well developed infrastructure".

Photograph from the early 1900s of the Mentone Coffee Palace

As much as we love our travels in France and Italy, our eyes become more open to what our home in Melbourne, Australia offers.

Sometimes you become blind to the beauty that surrounds you because you take it for granted. I can remember living 3 months on the west coast of the US.
California offered many wonderful sights, yet when I returned home, I rediscovered the beauty that surrounded me on my cycling training rides.

The blog will talk about general life in Melbourne, the sights, cafe culture, markets, events, food, wine and our experiences of daily life in one of the most livable cities in the world. Be warned that on occasion my views and Sue's maybe mixed with a little domestic altercation, but that's normal.

Feel free to join in with your own views.

I hope to share with you some of the delights of Melbourne - our home.

Leon and Sue