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Melbourne—Day Two

gonzo — Wed, 10 Oct 2007 13:02:06 +0000

For our second day, we booked an apartment in St Kilda. Not knowing much about the city, but enough to know that it is one of the more vibrant buroughs, we agreed that it must be better than the CBD-like surroundings of the hotel we had been staying the previous two nights.

A splash of colour

Naturally, in St Kilda we cruised down its World Famous Boulevard. Needless to say, the boulevard, although quite beautiful, is probably only world famous in St Kilda. For instance, I dare say it would have a hard time competing with Rio de Janeiro’s Copacabana, or the Champs-Ã‰lysÃ©es in Paris.

World Famous Boulevard

Nightlife in St Kilda is very agreeable. We thoroughly enjoyed being able to stay past 9pm (which is roughly the time the Blue Mountains shuts down on a weeknight). We enjoyed some of the best Thai food and friendliest service we encountered on all our trip. If only we could remember their name; we would have liked to fully endorse their enterprise.

A nice example of the very interesting architecture around St Kilda

It was my first visit to Melbourne, and having heard nothing but good stories (except for the weather), I still managed to find myself pleasantly surprised by all the impressive architecture (no doubt only managed to scrape the surface there), the friendly people and the overall vibe of the place. I would not be surprised to find myself living there some day…

Luna Park

Melbourne—Day One

gonzo — Tue, 09 Oct 2007 10:10:00 +0000

We spent our first day mainly driving around the city, taking in all the lovely architecture. We also managed to squeeze in a visit to Melbourne Museum. I appreciated the off beat interactive exhibition: each time we moved the swirly graphic in front of us came alive and mimicked our movements. Very nifty. It was even worthwhile wearing those gigantic and highly unfashionable 3D glasses.

The Melbourne Museum

Look at me! Nifty graphic programming…

Self portrait taken inside the zoology wing of the Melbourne Museum

Canberra To Melbourne

gonzo — Mon, 08 Oct 2007 10:33:03 +0000

Our main purpose for visiting, as it would be for many people, was parliament house. Both the old one and the new one. After visiting the stately Old Parliament House, we went to check out the New Parliament House. Along the way we saw chance to visit the National Archives which had some impressive images on display.

Old Parliament House

New Parliament House

It is good to see that the Aboriginal Ambassy is still “allowed to exist.” It’s shameful that the embassy is still needed as a means of protest, but until a lot of really difficult questions are both answered and acted upon by both federal and local governments many Australians will continue to support its existence.

Aboriginal Ambassy

The rest of the city turned out to be a bit of a disappointment. But then again, we have seen hardly anything, so we are not in a position to say much to that extend: we arrived late, and just spent half a day moseying around Parliament House (which was not in session at that time).

Towards Melbourne

The scenery on the way to Melbourne was quite spectacular indeed. Loved the purple fields full of wild flowers, the hills with their rocks and a beautiful sunset to top it all off. Since we had quite a few kilometers to travel that day, we ended up taking hardly any pictures. That’s a shame—it would have been worth it.

Scenery on the way to Melbourne

Melbourne

Coming into Melbourne late was a bit of a surprise. I don’t think I have seen as many speed camera’s anywhere in my life as I did entering Melbourne. Guess they want us to behave. So behave we did. We were staying in a nice hotel near Southern Cross train station. Unfortunately it was a little too far removed from China Town for our liking (which was buzzing even at the late hour we arrived).

Southern Cross railway station