Odds and ends as the Angels and Red Sox await the start of their division playoff series (7 p.m. today in Anaheim):
-- Angels starter John Lackey (12-5, 3.75 ERA) is coming off a shellacking, having given up 10 runs in 2 2/3 innings against Texas on Friday. Of course, in his prior start, also against the Rangers, he struck out 12 in six shutout innings.
"I had a good bullpen a couple of days ago," Lackey said Tuesday, "and I'm confident I'll be fine."
Manager Mike Scioscia wasn't too concerned about Lackey or Ervin Santana, who also got roughed up in his last regular-season start.
"We missed spots here and there, and Texas has the type of offense that's not very forgiving if you miss spots," he said. "... I think that if their velocity was down or they were struggling and weren't executing a lot of pitches, you would be more concerned, but they're healthy, they're fine and they're going to pitch well."
Lackey downplayed the significance of being the Game 1 starter -- "I just happen to be going tomorrow" -- but Scioscia did not.
"This is an important game for us to have a guy with not only John's stuff -- he's a had a terrific year for us -- but also his presence and his make-up to go out there. And if he's going to get beat tomorrow, it's going to be because the other team stepped up and hit his pitches and beat him."
-- Scioscia, typically relaxed, had a few good one-liners during his media session.
Asked to compare playing to managing, he said, "It's more impulsive eating when you're manager, I've noticed that.
"This game is about playing it. When you're in your backyard playing with your friends or your brother and you're making up those games, you're the guy that's up in the batter's box in the bottom of the ninth inning with two outs that hit the grand slam, not the manager that makes the pitching change that hopefully wins the game."
And when Mark Teixeira was asked about going to college instead of signing with the Red Sox out of high school, Scioscia joked to his slugging infielder, "I'm shocked you graduated high school and went to college. I didn't know that."
Responded Teixeira. "Georgia Tech -- it's hard to get into that place. You only need about a 1,400 SAT."
-- The Red Sox come in with some injury questions. Pitcher Josh Beckett was moved from a Game 1 start to Game 3 because of a strained oblique muscle, and the status of Mike Lowell (torn labrum, right hip) and J.D. Drew (herniated disc) are also uncertain.
Manager Terry Francona offered upbeat reports on all three.
"J.D. looked real good," he said during the Red Sox workout. "I actually thought Mike looked really good -- not that he's done everything he needs to do, but he looked encouraging moving around. And the movement he did do, it didn't grab at him or anything, and that was really encouraging."
Beckett, he said, made a series of throws from 60 and 90 feet. "The ball came out of his hand real well. Everything was encouraging." Beckett is scheduled for a long toss session Wednesday and will throw again Thursday.
Even with all of that, Francona said the team was yet not prepared to announce its playoff roster -- something the Angels set on Sunday.
"We'll go back and have a meeting at the hotel between the staff and everybody," he said, "and we'll probably talk to the players tonight, just so they know for tomorrow."

The Angels' playoff roster and pitching rotation has been set, and Simi Valley's Jered Weaver will find himself in the bullpen for the first-round series with Boston.
After the Angels' regular-season finale Sunday, manager Mike Scioscia Manager his rotation: John Lackey will start Game 1 on Wednesday, with Ervin Santana pitching Game 2 on Friday and Joe Saunders starting Game 3 in Boston on Sunday.
That places Weaver in the bullpen along with the fifth member of the starting rotation, Jon Garland. Given the relaxed five-game-in-eight-days schedule in the first round, the Angels certainly had the option of dropping one of the starters for another reliever.
"I think what this look gives us," explained Scioscia, "is an opportunity to do whatever we need to do in nine innings, and not to hold anybody back. Because we have Weave and Jon Garland with enough length that they can pitch, and pitch deep if we have a game that gets into extra innings.
"So I think there's some things that depth is going to help us to do some things earlier, and I that's what we leaned toward those two guys."
Darren Oliver, Jose Arredondo, Kevin Jepsen, Scott Shields and Francisco Rodriguez complete the 10-member playoff pitching staff. The only surprise in that group may be Jepsen, a right-hander whose major-league experience consists of 8 1/3 innings in nine appearances (0-1, 4.32) since joining the team after the Beijing Olympics, where he had one save and an ERA of 0.00 in four appearances as the U.S. won a bronze medal. He makes it, at least for the first round, at the expense of veteran Justin Speier, 2-8 with a 5.03 ERA in 62 games.
"I just think where we are right now," said Scioscia, "that Kevin Jepsen brings something that could be important to our bullpen. He has a power arm with good stuff and he's throwing the ball well. There's still a possible role for Justin, but right now, Kevin has the type of arm that could grow as you get into the playoffs. So we're going to give him a look."
A young power pitcher with very little major-league experience on the playoff roster? Angels fans have heard this before, but Scioscia cautioned not to make too much of a parallel with Rodriguez, who burst onto the scene with a major role in the 2002 postseason and has since become the Angels' closer, setting a major-league record for saves this year with 62.
"I don't think it's fair to canvass anything Frankie did in 2002 and hope anyone's going to jump in and do what he did," said Scioscia. "But I think there are some similarities, with the power arm, a guy that probably has not gotten a lot of exposure. And we'll see if we can grow with him. He's shown enough, certainly, in his appearances, where his stuff plays in the big leagues. And we'll see where he is."
Most of the 15 position players on the roster are obvious. The borderline selection of note would be infielder Brandon Wood, batting .200 with five homers and 13 RBIs.
A "taxi squad" of Speier, infielder Sean Rodriguez, and catcher Bobby Wilson will travel and work out with the team but will not be on the first-round roster, which can be re-set before each round of the postseason. Three other pitchers, Shane Loux, Jason Bulger and Dustin Moseley will go to the Arizona Instructional League and continue to pitch in order to be ready if needed later in the playoffs.
Winning finish: The Angels' 7-0 win over Texas on Sunday gave them a final record of 100-62, the first 100-win season in franchise history as well as the first time they've finished with the best record in baseball. (The Cubs and Rays each finished with 97 wins.)
"It's a great milestone," said Scioscia. "As we talked this week, there were more important things to be accomplished, but as hard as these guys worked, and for everything these guys have put out since day one of spring training, 100's a nice round number and we'll get ready for Wednesday now."

A fairly busy day in Anaheim, what with the Angels wrapping the regular season and the Ducks signing Teemu Selanne to a new two-year deal. Taking things a little out of sequence -- because I was giving the AP a hand on the Selanne story -- here are some of general manager Brian Burke's comments this afternoon, after the signing and before the Ducks played Vancouver in an exhibition game. (Because of the game, Selanne's won't be available to comment until later.)

On the two-year term of the contract, reported by the Orange County Register's Dan Wood to be worth $5.25 million:
"It was Teemu's request. I think he's entertaining thoughts of playing next year if his body will allow him to do it. The Olympics, in particular, have an allure for him. That would probably be his last competition in a Team Finland uniform. I'm not saying that he's going to get there -- either from a longevity standpoint or from a player-selection standpoint. That's up to the Finns. But I think that's in the back of his mind."

On the significance of the dollar figure, which Burke is not allowed to reveal:
"I will say, because I want to make sure I don't overlook this: These values reflect what Teemu means to us, and what Anaheim means to him. These are below-market numbers. What Teemu could command, what he could have commanded the last two seasons -- this is a guy who's taking a pay cut to play for Anaheim. And I think anytime an athlete does that it should be noted and singled out and praised. This is a wonderful young man. And by taking the salary he's taking, he's given us money to spend elsewhere to try and win. A very, very rare guy. My admiration for him has always been considerable, but it just goes up all the time."

On concerns Selanne might once again mull retirement after the season and leave the Ducks in a salary-cap bind:
"I just had this debate with somebody. Someone said it's not right for these guys to have trouble making up their mind, and I said, our league is better if those guys play even half a year. ...
"So, to me, I think with these older players, it's a legitimate wrestling match with what to do, and if they decide to play partial seasons, they're not under contract to anybody. They're not screwing anybody staying out. ...
"I think you're going to see more of it, not less."

On getting under the salary cap -- since, with Selanne's signing, the team is reported to be about $1.2 million over:
"There's a whole bunch of ways to deal with it. One is to send players down, whether they're players on two-ways or one-ways. One is to trade a player for a pick, you know, move some money and not take any money back. Those are all options; we're looking at all of them. We don't anticipate we'll have a problem getting under the cap to start the year, or we wouldn't have done this."
It will, he said, be much easier than the deal last week to get Mathieu Schneider's contract off the books, which the Ducks accomplished by trading the defenseman to Atlanta for three players.
"Until we dealt with the Mathieu Schneider situation, it hasn't been a whole lot of fun, because you don't feel like you've got control over the decision-making process. You're really at the mercy of the team stepping up. I feel, until that happened, I don't feel like I had control of the steering wheel. And I don't like that.
"This will be an easier process. It will be purely a hockey decision that makes sense, or we've got internal options" (like sending young forward Bobby Ryan to the minors).

The Sun Yue era of Lakers basketball will be delayed indefinitely.
A day after he was introduced to local media, the Lakers announced the 6-foot-9 guard from China had contracted mononucleosis and would be sidelined indefinitely.
In a press release, the team said the illness was diagnosed after Sun became ill Wednesday night and was taken to the emergency room of a local hospital.

EL SEGUNDO -- Mostly out of curiosity, I dropped by the Lakers' practice facility today for a press conference to introduce Sun Yue, the guard billed as "the Chinese Magic Johnson," mostly because he's 6-foot-9. (Or supposed to be, anyway; my first impression was that he's a couple inches shorter than that, but I'll have to wait until I get a better up-close look or see him by some of his teammates for a better feel of that.)
I didn't see any Olympic basketball in Beijing, so I haven't seen Sun in action. The August press release announcing his signing noted he averaged 6.8 points, 1.7 rebounds, 2.5 assists and 1.3 steals at the Olympics, which leaves out a rather key statistic, so I looked it up: 1.7 turnovers per game. Remembering how abysmal China's guards were at the 2004 Olympics -- they found it almost impossible to bring the ball up court against any kind of defensive pressure -- that's better than I expected, and could be the most significant state in the group.
I was not surprised to see a huge media turnout (relatively speaking) for the press conference, although only a small portion of it was the usual Laker media crew. About two-thirds of those in attendance represented what I'd term as Asian-Angelino media outlets, raising the prospect that the Lakers will have an even larger international press contingent this year, with those reporters joining those who started following the team when Pau Gasol arrived.
As for content of the press conference, Sun conducted it in English -- a reflection, no doubt, of the fact he played for an L.A.-based ABA team two years ago (the franchise subsequently moved to Singapore).
He did have a translator on hand for occasional help, but mostly handled himself pretty well, although it's probably wise to allow him some slack with the nuances. Asked about the strengths of his game, he twice called himself an "average" player, when it seemed more likely he meant something like "all-around," since the rest of his answer was about not focusing on any one area in particular.
Beyond that, it was pretty much the standard getting-to-know-you stuff. Sun said the Lakers had always been his favorite team, so he's been watching the triangle offense a lot, that he'll do whatever the coaches want him to, and that he thinks his time with the ABA team will make the transition to life as a Laker much easier, saying he already knows the city fairly well.
Sun was a second-round pick a year ago, and as such is certainly no lock to make the team. The Lakers will go into training camp next week with seven other guards (returnees Kobe Bryant, Jordan Farmar, Derek Fisher, Coby Karl and Sasha Vujacic, along with rookies Joe Crawford and Dwayne Mitchell) as well as swing man Ira Newble.
Back, and not yet back: The Lakers also announced Wednesday that they've re-signed backup center D.J. Mbenga -- Didier Ilunga-Mbenga, if you want to be formal. He played 26 games with the team last year -- originally on a pair of 10-game contracts before being retained for the rest of the season -- and averaged 2.0 points, 1.7 rebounds and 0.6 blocks in 7.8 minutes.
Mbenga will therefore be taking part when training camp opens, but Luke Walton won't. He has not yet been cleared to begin running as he continues to recover from July 18 ankle surgery.

Sorry, forgot to do this yesterday: I did, in fact, make it home, arriving at my apartment at the stroke of noon -- which made my door-to-door transit time from the hotel in Sydney to here exactly 36 hours. I only felt a little tired, and stayed up until midnight -- then slept until 2 a.m., woke up, went back to sleep at 3 a.m. -- and just woke up a few minutes ago, just before 1 p.m. So maybe I was a bit more tired than I thought.

I'll be back today or tomorrow with some wrapup thoughts and a few final pictures. Right now, I've got to finish waking up (no small challenge; I could easily have gone right back to sleep) and go in and deal with my expense report at work.

SEOUL -- If I spend any more time in the Seoul airport, I may qualify to vote in local elections.
This is my third -- and unfortunately longest -- layover. Back when this trip was originally booked, I was supposed to leave Sydney at 8 a.m. on the 10th, get here at 5:30 p.m., leave at 7:30 p.m., and get to L.A. in mid-afternoon.
But on Sept. 1, Korean Air realigned its schedule and did away with the 8 a.m. Sydney flight. Instead, there's one flight that begins in Melbourne, leaves Sydney at 7:50 p.m., and gets here at 5:30 a.m. So here I am, in the early stages of a 9 1/2 hour layover.
The good news is that I'm not going to have to just sit in the terminal for that time. They have two transit hotels here, and I can get a room in one for six hours for about $45. I consider that money well spent, to have a chance to take a nap and a shower. Of course, there are rules that complicate things. If you check in before 7:30 a.m., you have to buy 12 hours. If you check in after 7:30, you can do the six-hour block. So I have a little time to kill before I get into the room. I'd like to get something to eat, and probably will, but while a number of flights get here around 5:30 a.m., nothing in the airport opens until 7.
So in a few minutes, I'll probably be getting pancakes at McDonald's and then heading off to sleep.
I'm running on battery power -- I don't have the right electrical adapter for the plugs here -- so that's all for now. I should be home in about 20 hours. I'll check in sometime thereafter, and wrap things up once I'm a little more coherent.

SYDNEY -- The No. 1 thing on my agenda today was to take the train out to Sydney Olympic Park, to really bring this trip -- and eight years on the Olympic beat -- full circle by going back where it all began.
The Sydney Games remain my favorite -- good weather, good people, good planning and the inescapable thrill of covering an Olympic Games. At the time, I had no idea if it would be my only one; even though it wasn't, I doubt the experience will ever be topped.
Well, going back to the scene of all those memories was more than a little sad.
For one thing, the Olympic Park -- which I remember as a vibrant, energetic expanse of happy people -- is pretty much a ghost town.
The big stadium (not as big as it was then; the huge end-zone stands, always meant to be temporary, are long gone) still looks great, and still sees a decent amount of activity, mostly for the National Rugby League.

The Olympic stadium today.

But much of the rest of the facility is extremely underused. The big arena, where they played basketball, had banners up for a few concerts over the upcoming months (up next, Judas Priest on Friday), and the Sydney Showground -- which encompasses the old baseball stadium (set up for Aussie Rules when I went in), the press and broadcast centers, a small amphitheater (where a number of schoolgirls were having a choir practice) and a number of the other facilities used by sports like fencing and team handball -- lists just one event between now and Oct. 9 on its web site.

Tommy Lasorda managed the U.S. to a baseball gold medal here.

Olympic Boulevard, crammed with people during the Games, was almost completely empty:

The train station, which was a conveyor belt of humanity -- I remember snaking through Disneyland-type lines to get on board -- sees one shuttle train to the next nearest station every 20 minutes, and a handful of other direct trains.
There's a visitor's center, but it doesn't really celebrate what went on at the site. It rents bikes for those who want to tour the facility (it really is that big), has a few brochures about what you can do, and plugs a redevelopment concept to turn much of the park into a new planned community. Without the name, and a forest of poles listing all 74,000 volunteers (a nice touch), members of the Australian Olympic and Paralymic teams, and a few other details of the games, you'd have no real idea what happened here.

Volunteer Walk, outside the Olympic Stadium.

Which is too bad. Based on my conversations while I've been here, the people of Sydney still remember the games with great fondness. Given the great and clever museums I've visited for the city and The Rocks, it's a shame no one's made a similar effort on behalf of the Olympics.

Beyond the trip to Olympic Park, today was busy, but not in a way that would be particularly exciting in the retelling -- lots of walking around shopping, or trying to shop -- looking for specific items on behalf of my brother or for myself, mostly unsuccessfully.
Along the way, probably the most notable spot I visited (mainly because it was in my path) was the Anzac Memorial, honoring veterans of World War I, which was cited in that Art Deco exhibit I saw at the museum in Melbourne. It is a pretty classic example of Art Deco design.

Tomorrow, I'll have about a half-day in the city before starting a pretty arduous trip home -- 11 hours overnight to Seoul, a 9 1/2 hour layover in Seoul, and then another 12-plus hours to L.A. I might post something from the layover in Seoul. If not, I'll wrap things up once I'm home.
After almost six weeks, I'm really looking forward to sleeping in my own bed again.

SYDNEY, Sunday, 10:45 p.m. -- The sun came out, and I was determined to take advantage. So today was a day on the move, and I have the aching feet to prove it.
I checked out of the Lord Nelson about 9 a.m., wheeled my big bag several blocks to my new hotel (more on that later), checked the bag, got breakfast, visited a street market and got a few gifts for friends, then jumped on a ferry to Manly, the community at the mouth of Sydney Harbor. It's about a 30-minute trip. Since I boarded at the last minute at Circular Quay, I didn't have a great spot for picture-taking on the outbound trip. It was Father's Day here in Australia, and that and a nice day after a couple days of rain meant everyone was out and about.
Manly itself, at the point where the ferry docks, is probably less than a half-mile wide. On the harbor side, you have a nice beach ...

... and on the Tasman Sea side, you have a really nice beach.

I didn't really have any destination in mind; I just walked around for a little bit, down the Corso -- the mall from the ferry landing to the sea -- and then went to get a ferry back to Circular Quay. This time, I made sure I was one of the first people on, so I could have a seat in the front. Which allowed me to get pictures like this (that's Fort Denison) ...

... and this.

It was now time for me to check in at my hotel for my last two nights in Australia. My good friends Andrea Smith and Peter Green -- as a gift, for no particular reason -- have treated me to a room at the Shangri-La Hotel, a name which sounds like some 1950s motor inn but actually is a luxury high rise. This is it from the ferry; it's the skyscraper in the center with the dark square near the top.

This is my room ...

... and this is the full view from my window.

While there was a strong temptation to just stay and gaze at the view, I instead went and caught a CityRail train, crossed the Sydney Harbour Bridge to the first stop in North Sydney, and walked back across.

You can go climb to a viewing area on top of the bridge pier on the Sydney side (if you pay $9.50), so I did. The view, not surprisingly, was tremendous.

Eventually, I came back to my room, dropped a couple things off, and went off to find dinner. I ended walking quite a distance, all the way to Darling Harbour ...

... where I had a really interesting dinner -- Italian/Thai fusion, crab and shrimp ravioli in a sauce with lemongrass, peanut and I'm not sure what else. It was excellent.
After that, I came back and walked around Circular Quay, taking night pictures of the Opera House and Harbour Bridge. Here are just a couple (of many) ..

After that, I came back to the room -- fairly early, to be sure, but how can you resist this view?

SYDNEY, Saturday, Sept. 6, 11:15 p.m. -- It's the last stop before home.
For the first time in eight years, I'm back in Sydney, a truly beautiful city and one I will always regard fondly as the home of my first experience of an Olympic reporter.
I couldn't get the internet connection to work last night at my hotel, but it's working now, so here's a two-day update:

FRIDAY -- I am not greeted warmly on my return to Sydney. Weatherwise, that is.
I left sunny Melbourne knowing the Sydney forecast was for rain. The woman sitting next to me on the train said the forecast was for rain. And midway through the trip, shortly after the stop in Wagga Wagga (how great a name is that?) the sun vanished behind leaden skies; about two hours out of Sydney, the rain finally started.
It was not a hard rain, but a steady one -- and more or less horizontal thanks to a strong wind. So after getting to the hotel about 8:45 (it took a long time to get a cab from Sydney Central), I didn't really go out, save for a quick trip to the mini mart across the street.
Luckily, my accomodation -- the Lord Nelson, Sydney's oldest hotel (or so it says; my Lonely Planet guidebook notes another hotel nearby makes the same claim, which has a bar on the ground floor and two stories of boutique hotel rooms at the top, also has a fabulous restaurant on the second floor (which they call the first here, in the European style, although the ground is "ground," rather than "zero"). So my trip to dinner took me down two flights of stairs for curried fish. And my was it good.
As for the train trip itself, I'm glad I did it, but I probably won't feel the need to repeat it any time soon.

The train to Sydney arrives in Melbourne.

It was a good way to see the scenery between Melbourne and here, which reminded me a lot of the away-from-the-ocean parts of the trip on Amtrak's Coast Starlight, around San Luis Obispo and points north -- lots of rolling hills and ranch land (though far more sheep than you'd see in California). If you've never tried it, it's really difficult to take pictures out of a train window, particularly with a point-and-click digital camera with an auto-focus delay like mine. If you see something, grab your camera, point it and click, whatever you were trying to shoot is often gone. Or some tree suddenly and thoughtlessly appears to get in the way. And you have to deal with the reflections off the glass.
But here's one decent shot out the train window:

Australia is a lot like most of the U.S. in that train service is more or less an afterthought in the grand transportation scheme. The newish equipment used from Melbourne to Sydney, known as the XPT, isn't fast enough to dazzle you technically, as European trains do, and isn't really charming enough to make up for its leisurely pace, as on the famous cross-Australia trips, the east-west Indian Pacific (which I took back in 2000) and north-south Ghan (which I'd like to do someday). Mostly, it's trying to be an airplane on the ground, which is particularly true of its undistinguished food service.
Not a bad trip, by any means, but in the future, I'd be more likely to fly and make use of the extra time in Melbourne or Sydney.

TODAY -- On Friday, the Saturday forecast was for showers. Apparently, this was a slight error; what the forecaster meant to say was that "the rain will make you feel like you're standing in your shower."
Now, Sydney is a great walking around town, but not in a steady rain with a steady wind. And the Lord Nelson's location on the far edge of the district known as The Rocks would not normally feel that remote, but in bad weather, it became less than ideal.
So I spent the day very much focused on indoor tourist possibilities -- the Sydney Museum (excellent, with some very clever interactive presentations, and a fascinating section on the flying boats that connected served the city from the 1930s until 1974), the Art Gallery of New South Wales (pretty good, although really crowded on a rainy day, and too much contemporary art for my tastes, which are more grounded in old masters and impressionists), The Rocks Discovery Museum (which overlapped the Sydney Museum a bit in its information on the founding of the city, but was similarly well done with excellent use of touch-screen interactive information) and finally the Sydney Aquarium.
I hadn't really planned on visiting another aquarium so soon after the one in Melbourne, but while most attractions closed at 5 p.m., the aquarium stays open until 10, so I was happy to visit it in the evening. And I was really glad I did. This was an excellent aquarium, addressing most of the failings and omissions of the one in Melbourne, which didn't have such iconic Australian creatures as crocodiles, penguins or platypuses (platypi? I really do need to find out). Sydney's did, and generally did a better job of presentation and information. If you ever vacation here and are going to both cities, Sydney's aquarium is the one to see. (It should be noted, however, that construction has begun on a major expansion of the Melbourne facility, which might allow it to close the gap).

A ray shark at the Sydney Aquarium.

By the time I came out of the aquarium a little before 9 p.m., the rain had actually stopped. Of course, by the time I left a nearby internet café where I did a quick e-mail check, it had started again, leaving me to nervously consider what I'm going to do if it keeps raining tomorrow.

I'm going to try to keep this short tonight -- I'm tired, I need to repack (boy, am I getting tired of that) and I just don't really feel like spending a lot of time on the computer.
Two main items on the agenda today -- I'm a big fan of aquariums, so I wanted to go to the one here, and I also wanted to visit the other building of the National Gallery of Victoria, the one dedicated to Australian art.
The aquarium was a bit of a disappointment. It was rather small, and pitched a little too much to kids for my taste. But like a lot of newer aquariums (this one only opened in 2000), it does have one of those big tanks where you're completely encircled by water and marine life. Here, they simply call it the Fish Bowl, and -- as is the case at most aquariums, it's really popular because it has sharks.

The National Gallery of Victoria building I visited today is in Federation Square, which also has the Australian (Horse) Racing Museum and some shops and restaurants. As I indicated in China, I like a lot of modern architecture, but I have to say these buildings don't quite do it for me.

Beyond that, I did rather aimless wandering in the central city and a little shopping, mostly of the window variety, then came back out to walk around St. Kilda a bit more. One photo I will share with you is the entrance to the Luna Park amusement park.

Eventually, I decided to go back into the city to buy something I'd originally passed on, so instead of turning back to catch the tram, I went forward and caught the train at Balaclava station. This isn't my train -- it's one going in the other direction -- but this is what the commuter trains here look like.

I did my purchase, looked around for a restaurant, decided nothing quite caught my fancy and headed back to St. Kilda.
My goal was a well-regarded Indian restaurant. But it was absolutely packed, so I ended up a couple of doors down at a place called Blue Corn -- which does what I would call gourmet "creative Mexican" food. Gourmet, of course, means "pricy" -- chips with salsa and guacamole are $11 -- but you've never quite seen Mexican food like this. I ended up having the "double baked burrito" (which turned out to be a chimichanga) with chorizo, chicken, bacon, pumpkin spinach and rocket (which is what they call a kind of lettuce). Huge, $26, and outstanding. As good as any Mexican food I've had in a long time, even if it wasn't Mexican as we know it.
That's all for tonight. Tomorrow, it's the all-day train trip to Sydney. I may or may not have a report tomorrow night.

MELBOURNE -- Day one of my two days to explore Melbourne was a mixed bag.
I was up early to do a load of laundry (there's a laundromat, or as they put it here, a launderette, right across the street from the hotel), since I'd run out of clean long-sleeve shirts and it definitely remains long-sleeve weather. (Today's low was 7, which translates to about 46 degrees, with a high of 16 [61] with a breeze.)
After that, it was time to take the rental car back, which was a huge relief. After the first day in Tasmania, I did OK with the wrong-side-of-the-road driving -- though I was hitting the wiper control when I wanted the turn signals and vise versa to the end -- but driving in Melbourne with its narrow streets and extensive tram network, is a much more high-stress situation. (Clearly, that's true for the locals, too; both in my brief period of driving and today as a pedestrian, I heard car horns at something approaching a New York cabbie pace.)
The Avis office in South Yarra proved to be right by a train station -- not the famous Melbourne trams, but commuter rail -- so I took a brief ride into the central city to go to the National Gallery of Victoria, the art museum which actually has two distinct galleries. I went to the international gallery, which had a great traveling exhibit on Art Deco (among other things, it gave me a strong desire to start collecting 1930s radios). No photos were allowed in that exhibit, which is too bad, because there really were some great Art Deco pieces across a wide range of arts.
Beyond that exhibit -- which had an admission fee -- the gallery offered free admission to a wide-ranging collection of European masters and contemporary artists. Unlike, say, the Met in New York or the Art Institute in Chicago, this isn't a collection of works you've seen in books for your whole life, but there was still a pretty wide range of works by well-known artists -- or believed to be by well-known artists. The attribution significant number of the paintings on display seems to be in dispute, including a Rembrandt "self-portrait" that is apparently the subject of great debate among art scholars. To my untrained eye, it certainly had the kind of facial expressiveness that makes a Rembrandt special; whoever did it, I admired it for quite a while.

(By the way, I apologize for that weird angle, but that's what it took to avoid reflections from the lighting.)
Unfortunately, it was not long after this that I was struck with the beginnings of one of my rare migraine headaches, for the second time on this trip. (I also had one either my first or second full day in Beijing.) I ended up having to leave the museum rather quickly (luckily, I had Aleve, which works for me as a migraine remedy, in my backpack) and made my way by tram back to the hotel to lie down for an hour or so until the worst had passed. But it ended up punching a big hole in the middle of the day.
I actually went back to the museum later -- because I had seen that on Wednesdays, it stays open until 9 p.m. instead of the usual 5 p.m. -- but that proved to not quite be the case. Only the Art Deco exhibit was open to the public; the rest of the museum was only available to members as part of a private function.
But, since I was back in the central city, I took a few pictures along the Yarra River.

I walked around the Federation Square area a little bit -- I'll probably have some pictures from there tomorrow -- and while, predictably, most everything was closed,
I did find a Starbucks and went in, seeking to address my desire for iced tea. (It's really odd to me that I've been in two very tea-oriented cultures in China and Australia, and neither one has figured out that tea with ice is a good thing. They like coffee hot and iced here; shouldn't that suggest there's a place for iced tea, as well?)
Unfortunately, I found that Starbucks here may serve iced tea, but that doesn't mean that its people here get iced tea. At home, I walk into a Starbucks, order a venti iced tea, unsweetened black, and they take out a pitcher and can deliver the beverage in a matter of moments.
Here, ordering an iced team means having them brew a cup of hot tea and then dumping it over ice -- which invariably means lukewarm tea, rather than cold tea, and increases the odds it will be too strong or too weak.
I might give it another shot in Sydney -- there are a number of Starbucks there, as well -- but I suspect I'm still about a week away from really getting a good iced tea.

MELBOURNE, Victoria -- So I'm at the midway point of my Australian trip, and this marks the point at which it changes from sightseeing in the countryside to visiting cities. Tomorrow morning I'll turn in my rental car, and I won't have another. Melbourne and Sydney both have extensive rail networks, so I'll get around that way.
Today, though, was one last day of lots of driving and picture-taking.
When I went to bed last night, I set the alarm early, with the thought that if it was sunny when the alarm went off, I might head back to the Twelve Apostles for some photos with morning light, maybe even the morning golden hour. But when I woke up just ahead of the 7 a.m. alarm, it was not all that light yet, and it was raining. So much for that idea.
But I couldn't really get back to sleep, so I ended up getting up, and leaving the motel as soon as the office opened at 8 a.m. By then, the rain had stopped and there were patches of blue sky, so I did head back to the park -- and I'm glad I did.
The sun came out while I was there, and for one glorious half-hour, I had the entire Twelve Apostles viewing area to myself. Literally. No buses, no tour groups, no helicopter sightseeing tours, nothing. Just me, the rocks and the sun (although it was bitterly cold). It felt like having the Grand Canyon to yourself -- and I suspect it happens just about as often.
Two (of many, many) photos:

Eventually, one other couple showed up -- professional photographers from New Zealand -- and one of them took this picture ...

... before I took off and left them with a few moments of having the place to themselves. Not many, though. By the time I got back in my car, two other cars had pulled into the parking lot.
Meanwhile, I made the short hop back to the Loch Ard Gorge area, and took another round of photos there -- some of the places I'd visited the day before, and some I'd missed -- before finally saying goodbye to that area at 10 a.m.

Loch Ard Gorge.

Part of Muttonbird Island (center, with arch), so named because 50,000 of the birds nest on the relatively small hunk of rock from October to April because no predators can reach them.

Island Arch, in somewhat better conditions than the afternoon before.

After breakfast in Port Campbell, I continued west on the part of the Great Ocean Road I hadn't driven during my visit in 2000, from Port Campbell to where it ends near Warrnambool, finding many more cool spots -- more than I can post, but here are a few.
The Arch:

London Bridge (which used to look more like its namesake, until the part on the left collapsed in 1990, leaving two people stranded on the newly-created island until they could be rescued by helicopter):

And the Grotto.

From there, it was into Warrnambool, where I gassed up, put a parcel in the mail (I was tired of trying to pack around that Chinese Army hat; it's on its way home now) and then drove to Melbourne on the A1, which is basically the primary east-west national highway. Scenic enough, but I didn't stop for many pictures. I did take one or two as I drove so you could see that the main national highway is your basic two-lane road.

And now I'm in Melbourne, in the beachfront St. Kilda district, which strikes me as a cross between Santa Monica and Venice. I'll be turning in early, because it was an early morning, and since it's cold and raining intermittently -- as it did throughout the day -- it's not a great night for exploring.
That will have to wait until tomorrow.

PORT CAMPBELL -- So that brings us up to today.
If last Friday, the day of the long drive through Tasmania from Hobart to Burnie, was one of the two days I most needed good weather, today -- driving the Great Ocean Road, sort of the Australian answer to California's Highway 1 -- was the other.
I didn't get it, not entirely. But I got enough.
I awoke this morning in Geelong and could tell there was bright sunshine outside. When I opened the window of my hotel room, that proved to be true -- to the east. But I was heading west, and to the west, there were clouds.
Early on, though, I had sun, or at least partial sun, driving through Torquay, stopping to get some pictures around the Split Point lighthouse ...

... and otherwise working my way long the coast, stopping at just about every pullout and overlook for photos, as well as a stop for a terrific breakfast in Lorne at a place called Kafe Kaos. (The place has a sense of humor. I had Green Eggs and Ham, which was scrambled eggs with pesto sauce, and there was a sign on the wall saying "Unaccompanied children will be given an espresso and a free puppy.")
I came away with too many photos to post here, but it's safe to say I got some good ones.

By the midway point of the drive, though -- the Mait's Rest rainforest walk and the Cape Otway lighthouse -- it was raining, pretty steadily at times. I still took the rainforest walk, which I remember fondly from my trip here after the Sydney Olympics.

At one point, it started raining heavily for a short period, but the foliage is so dense that while I could hear the heavier rain hitting above me, there was no appreciable difference in the amount reaching me.
Cape Otway, though, was pretty miserable -- not so much because of the rain, but because the rain combined with a fierce wind made for a biting cold. I didn't stay long.

Now I was really getting nervous, When I drove the Ocean Road in 2000, the weather was good until I reached Port Campbell National Park, home of some fantastic coastal rock formations, most famously a group known as the Twelve Apostles. My photos from that trip are pretty bad -- very dark because of the overcast and rain, with one of me taken by a Japanese tourist where I look cold and miserable, mostly because I was.
Well, this time around, it was gray and overcast almost right to the moment when I reached the Twelve Apostles. Then the sun came out.
So here they are: Apostles in the sunshine.

Shooting toward the sun, unfortunately ...

... and shooting the other way, with the sun at my back.
Why, I don't even look so miserable this time, even though the wind was whipping my jacket around and it was C-O-L-D.

There were a lot of people about, mostly from bus tours -- including a Japanese couple getting wedding pictures taken in full formal wedding dress with the Apostles in the background -- but that's unavoidable when you visit a spot like this, I suppose. I can't really imagine what it must be like in high season.
Having shot the Apostles, I made the short hop down the road to the other great set of rock formations, and after taking a few, had filled the memory card in my camera. So I had to go back to the car, get out the laptop and download the photos so I could shoot more.
While I was doing that, it's safe to say the weather changed a bit.

A few more photos, and it was clear a downpour was imminent. So I drove into Port Campbell, got a motel room, and did the first part of this update during a driving rain.
But by the time was I finished writing and uploading photos, the rain had stopped and the sun came back out. Since I'm only about six miles from the national park, I jumped back in the car to see if I could get some good photos at sunset.
Of course, by the time I got back out there, the sun was behind some more clouds. But I did get a few more pictures -- and more to the point, since the rain had chased everyone off, I had 30 minutes in the park to myself. That was well worth the biting cold.