heather's amazing stuff

This was a full day! We were rested and ready to explore more of Melbourne. We wanted to see as much of the city as we could because we had set aside day 3 to make sure we did all of our souvenir shopping at the local market (a great tip from our cabbie) and day 4 was supposed to be a tour of some wineyards or vineries (as Rob says). Unbeknownst to us, the winery tours would not happen but none the less, this day was planned w/that in mind.

We always seemed to get up and started a little too late for breakfast so we went to Chinatown for lunch. We found this Thai place and it was pretty deserted, but we figured it was a little early for the lunch crowd so we didn't let that bother us. We had some GREAT food and were on our way to explore.

Once again we found some cool architecture. That seemed to be everywhere.



One of the reasons could be because of RMIT-Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology. Rob said it their equivalent to our MIT, although it is not quite a rival, but is a very good school. We happened to pass their city campus almost every day and the building was interesting from all angles. I'll post one pic here. Hopefully Rob will post a couple of the others.



Also like Sydney, Melbourne seemed to be big on their random cool art. I even found a web page after we got back, of course, that showed the 10 coolest sculptures of interest in Sydney. I don't think we saw a one of them, and yet I thought we saw some pretty unique art.



While this picture is sort of out of order in terms of how our day went...I figured it made sense to post it w/the other random cool architecture pics! This was a cool piece of art on our way to dinner and "Southgate" where we were told to eat. I believe it was similar to Circular Quay in that it seemed to be a yuppie walk along the Yarra of restaurants and such leading to the casino. These people love their casinos as we were told to go to the casino in Sydney too by one of the locals. We didn't go in Sydney because there was much more to do. We did go to the one in Melbourne and it reminded me of Ceasars in Vegas, complete w/Forum Shops, dancing waters inside (sort of like the Mirage) and a cool fire show at night (sort of like when Treasure Island erupts).

So we decided this was going to be our museum day. We headed to the treasury/parliament area and ended up going to the treasury museum. While they don't keep any gold there, they had some GREAT exhibits and history on the beginnings of Melbourne, at least they didn't have any corny songs about the city like the observation tower did.



After this we headed over to Parliament and were hoping to take a tour. Unfortunately they were in session and so there were no public tours. We ended up taking some cool pictures of the exterior instead.



Australia has many parks. On our way to the next museum we of course had to walk through one. Their parks are very sprawling and beautiful and usually have interesting items in the middles. This one park had a miniature model of a tudor village as well as a dolphin fountain, a river fountain and a fairy tree. Apparently there is an author (Ola Cohn) who wrote children's books about fairies and also carved a tree for this park way back when (the artist's "signature" and date are on the tree). The top of the tree has since been cut off but the part w/the carvings still remains. I have to admit it was a pretty remarkable tree. Hopefully Rob will post the other pics of the tree.



After an afternoon snack we finally found ourselves wandering around and ended at a church that had been mentioned in some of the brochures. This church was HUGE. We also found out that the church we'd gone to in Sydney was the site of an altar fire courtesy of someone who had overstayed their student visa.

We went back to some of the shopping areas and found that, just like in Sydney, everything closed up at 6...we got to a store right as a lady was closing up and we asked if this was a cultural thing and what they all did after 6. She said that they go home and cook, clean, wash, spend time w/their families and watch horrible American reality TV. By this time she knew that we were American and was having fun w/us. She did tell us to go over to the casino and the restaurants on the way, so that is where we headed. As an interesting tidbit, we did find out about the 888 which meant 8 hours of work, 8 hours of play and 8 hours of rest that had come about in days of old. I believe this is also where May Day comes from. I'll have to check w/Rob as he did all the research on this when we got home...looking for a picture of the 888 statue.

On our way we got a picture of the beautiful sunset and the lights coming on in the city.



We got to see some great nightlife after dinner. Along the banks of the river there was a group of 4 guys all playing covers and they couldn't have been older than 17. They were quite good...so good in fact that we stayed and listened for awhile. The restaurantuer said that they're there every night and it's getting old because they play the same songs! They had even attracted a baton twirler who was twirling fire! Rob got some pics of that! Here was some of our view.






We actually ended up walking back over that footbridge. We walked back to our hotel (a good mile at least) and probably ended up stopping at Coles or another supermarket for some water, solo lemonade and probably some turkish delight (which Rob liked and I couldn't stand).

Day 2 in Melbourne had come to an end...tomorrow--SHOPPING!!