Today I met up with a couple of people on work issues (boring!). While I was doing this Alek went into the Australian Embassy to see people that he knew from his time there - 1986 to 1989, a very long time ago. Needless to say, everything has changed. You can no longer just walk casually in, they put you through a metal detector, you have to leave your mobile phone, camera, laptop, etc, outside. Oh for the good old days. There was security back then too, but the kids managed to work out the codes in 10 seconds flat and immediately had the run of the whole embassy.
So no sightseeing today, and I didn't take any photos today either. This area (Montgomery) is quite interesting, very picturesque, lovely Art Deco buildings, and probably other eras too, but I know nothing about architecture. There are a lot of embassies around here. We are managing to navigate the Metro, which is very efficient, makes travel in the city very easy. Of course we used it when we lived here, and it hasn't changed that much.
And the 'villo' system of bicycles is great too. You put a coin in a slot - 1 euro 50 a day, or 7 euros a week, for a bicycle which belongs to the city. You can ride it anywhere, and leave it at any of the other 'villo' spots, or bring it back to where you started. Some bike lanes look great, others look a bit dangerous to me - sharing with buses for example. Time we had this system in Oz too, especially Canberra, which is so good for bikes. It's a great system to use in conjunction with public transport, it must take a lot of traffic off the roads.
More tomorrow, and probably more photos. Hope all is well at home. Miss you!
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