Chinese New Year in Melbourne

It’s Chinese New Year and celebrations are full-on here in Melbourne. Chinatown here seems larger and livelier than in Sydney. The choices are abundant as far as Chinese food goes, from high end (lobster and crab tanks in the windows) to a wide range of hawker’s type eating establishments throughout Chinatown. Also in Chinatown are other Asian restaurants from Japanese, Korean, Thai, Malaysian, Indonesian, Vietnamese, and anything else you can think of. Dumpling restaurants seem to be a big hit here and some are very good and quite inexpensive.
Chinese New Years falls on the same day as Australia Day this year so the entire town is jumping with activity. We went down to Federation Square to watch the fireworks with the thousands others who had the same idea.
We’ve just finished our tenth straight day of tennis at the Australian Open. A good thing too because it’s getting very hot. The forecast for this week is supposed to be the hottest week in a hundred years.

Melbourne Year of the Ox time: