The first stop of Day 3 was South Yarra, a nice neighborhood with lots of shops and restaurants close to the CBD. There are a lot of historic houses in South Yarra, including the Como Historic House, which we took a tour of. There are some pretty gardens surrounding the old house and a courtyard with a fountain in the front. We weren't sure what to expect when we were walking up toward the house for the tour, but we realized once we were inside that it would be worth it. The house has been preserved well and contains the same furnishings that were there in the mid 1800s. A few volunteer tour guides walked with us through the different rooms in the house, including the elegant dining room, and ballroom. They shared stories and information about the Armytage family who lived in the house for 95 years. For example, there was no electricity back in those days, so the tour guides explained how mirrors and candles were used to magnify whatever natural light was available. We spent a couple of hours at the house and enjoyed everything about it.

After that we walked along Toorak Road and stopped at Soda Rock for lunch. Soda Rock is just like a 50's style hamburger joint from the US and they advertised themselves as being just like the ones in the US. This is where I had my first Dr Pepper of the trip. Dr Pepper is not bottled in Australia so it has to be imported and is difficult to find. I had the hamburger and Troy had a sloppy joe, which wasn't really much of a sloppy joe. We shared some onion rings and a banana thickshake. In Australia, a regular shake is very thin and almost just tastes like milk. What we think of as shakes or milkshakes are called "thickshakes" over there. Troy also had a Lift Lemon soft drink, which is produced by Coca-Cola and tastes like a combination of lemonade and Sprite.

After lunch, Sofia had to go to work for the rest of the day and Adam took us to the Shrine of Remembrance. The Shrine was built as a memorial for the Australian men and women that served in World War I and subsequent wars. The main sanctuary has a marble stone with the words "Greater love hath no man". Once a year, on November 11th at 11am (Remembrance Day in Australia), a ray of sunlight shines through an aperture in the roof to light up the word "Love" in the inscription. There is also a viewpoint near the top of the Shrine where you can see the CBD.

After that, we were going to visit the National Gallery of Victoria, but the main art gallery just happened to be closed on Tuesdays. So instead, we went back to the CBD and purchased our tour tickets for the Great Ocean Road tour at the Melbourne Tourist Center, which is actually very helpful for tourists. We explored more of the CBD with Adam including some neat shopping arcades.

Arcade in Melbourne on Vimeo.

Then we went to the Crown Casino to have a look around. It's similar to any of the major hotels on the Strip in Las Vegas, in that it's pretty big, has a huge casino floor, has fancy fixtures, and a water/laser light show in the main atrium. We ate dinner at one of the restaurants inside and Adam gave us coupons for free wine with our entree. Both Troy and I got the chicken parmesan that came with chips (better known as french fries in the US), and salad. It was actually really good and was only $10 a plate. It was nice to relax after a busy day and have dinner and talk with Adam for a good while.

We explored the casino a little more and then went outside to see the fire show at night, which was really neat. There are 6 or 7 black pillars along the river on the side of the casino and every hour they create a fire show of big bursts of flames in patterns. Some of the balls of flame were so big that we could easily feel the heat they generated, even from 50 feet away.

Crown Casino flame show on Vimeo.

The last stop of the day was at Melbourne Central for dessert at Max Brenner, an Israeli chocolate bar chain with stores all over Australia. I'm a big fan of desserts, especially chocolate desserts, so I was almost in heaven at this place. The three of us split the chocolate souffle and a cinnamon roll with chocolate sauce on top. They were both so good, it was amazing. I liked it so much, we went back two more times on our trip.