On the Tuesday the week before last, Mikes parents came home from their European holiday. And we spent time at their house hearing about all the things they had been up to. They brought a quill for me in Venice and a scarf from Spain even if i told them i didn't want them to by a thing. I think they are really good gifts. I have always wanted a quill but have never been even close of finding one anywhere. And the most important thing is that they really enjoyed their 7 week trip.
Then came Saturday and it was time for us to go for our holiday to Melbourne. I was not very excited to go on a plane, as i mentioned in my last post, but I found trying to take pictures out the window actually relaxed me and made the time go quicker. The first picture is the lower edge of WA were we went down to on our trip down to Pemberton.
On the first day in Melbourne we checked in to the hotel. Because it was late, we got our bearings to try to find our way to get some food. So we got recommended by the girl at the hotel front desk to go to an alleyway where there was nothing other than wall to wall restaurants. They had people standing outside every restaurant trying to get customers in to the restaurant they were working for. It was like no where I have ever been before and I can say for sure that I did not like to be hassled and asked to go in to places every five steps I took. But I guess its not everybody's cup of tea, they are just doing their job. However, as a person trying to quietly decide what to eat, it is quite a distraction and also quite frustrating. We ended up going in to one not too far in to the alleyway. The food there was pretty good and there was a lot of choice on the menu because they did a little bit of everything. I did end up feeling a bit on edge because i felt the only reason i was sitting there eating the meal was because i was trapped in to making a decision based on the fact i did not feel like getting hassled again. For me that's a huge thing that i normally would just walk away from. But since we didn't know what other options we had for food I ended up accepting it. Even if I did feel slightly confused and tricked.
After the meal we went back to the hotel and settled in a bit. The view from our hotel room was not the best because most of it was a building site but we didn't expect to have to look at it too much because we would be out and about allot of the time anyway.
The next day we decided to go to the Zoo so we found our way to buy a tram card for the trams. We also ended up buying some fruit and water so we could refuel just in case we didn't find anywhere good to eat in the zoo. The tram ride there was really nice. At firs we were going to walk to the zoo, but i am very happy we didn't because it took us quite a while to get there even on the tram. We paid our entry fee at the zoo and walked in. At first we got lost and the map didn't make any sense. But when we had walked around one side of the whole zoo, we got to the main entrance. Turns out that we entered through the back entrance built for people going there by tram, and we had been holding the map upside down the whole time because we thought we came through the main entrance in the first place. We decided to have some food and found a little spot with a few food places in a group. We decided to go to the zoo bakery and we were surprised how good food they had. The seagulls wanted in on the food too and we saw them grab chips from a family that didn't pay attention to their three year old boy's meal. We looked at almost all the animals in the zoo except the Australian animals section. It does not seem too interesting when you can see those kinds of animals anyway just by walking around. Below there is a few pictures, my favorites in the whole zoo were the butterfly house and the snow leopards.
Later that night we went to have dinner in the docklands by the river. I had gotten recommended to go to a restaurant there by one of my friends at work. She was right about the place, because the food was awesome and it was really beautiful sitting on the waters edge and looking out over the marina.
On the Monday we went to the Melbourne Aquarium. They had a lot of interesting fish and reptiles. We walked through the shipwreck aquarium with half a sunken ship on the bottom where there was sharks and other really big schools of fish. You could pay a ticket price to go dive with the sharks, and i got a photo of a guy that was in there while we were having a look. I would never do something like that, even if I know the sharks would not be hungry.
We payed to be able to throw some food in to the smaller fish. As we got to the end of the aquarium they had a room with ice and snow that had penguins and they were being fed at the time, so we stayed there the whole feeding and presentation.
The penguins were nesting at the time and it was really fun standing there and watching them building their nests out of rocks and trying to sneak in and steal some rocks from their neighbors nest.
After the aquarium that we went to Melbourne's royal botanical garden, before we even had a chance to go in we found a very sick looking bird sitting on the ground, a lady who walked past said the bird was there half an hour ago when she walked past last time and we felt bad about the whole thing so we called the rangers to come and help out. As we were waiting for them to get to were we were a lady showed up with two dogs and she knew someone in the area who had lost a bird recently. So she tried to get hold of the lady she knew to see if it could be hers. Then there was another dog that walked past and tried to grab the bird who got scared and flew up on the first branch in a tree, Still not looking good at all. We tried to talk to it so it would come down to us, but it looked almost half dead out of exhaustion. It was sitting there for a while as we were trying to figure out a way to try to catch it. The lady had not managed to get hold of the lady who had lost a bird. So we stopped a very tall guy who could try to reach the branch and try to pull it down lower for us to reach the bird. The pulling down went well but when we tried to catch the bird it spread it wings and half flew half tumbled away down the big grass area. The lady had tied her dogs leads to a pole and ran after the bird leaving us with her very upset dogs. A while later the rangers showed up and talked to us about what was going on. So we told them about the whole story that seems quite weird when you have to think about whats actually happened. The rangers said they could not help us if it was a bird, because they were almost impossible to catch even if they were really sick and tired.
After we had been standing there about fifteen minutes and telling the story to the rangers having two yapping dogs on the side. The lady came walking back with the bird wrapped in a clean diaper she had borrowed from a mom with a toddler further down the park to try to catch the bird.
She then got to take the bird with her in her handbag (after the rangers had taken a photo of the bird-in-a-diaper burrito) to go to the lady she knew to see if it was her bird.
That event cost us quite a lot of time from our time that we had intended to use in the Botanical gardens and we ended up having to walk through it quite quickly so we could go meet up with Dean in South Yarra. So i only took one picture along a pathway as we were walking.
I had a look at a lot of flowers and trees on the way, i just forgot to take photos. But then we realized we had gotten ahead of ourselves and gone to South Yarra too early and that we could have stayed in the garden for about another one and a half hour. So we ended up going to the local pub and having a couple of drinks to pass the time.
When we finally met up with dean when he got of work we had a good time having dinner and talking for about three hours, and catching up on whats happened since last time we saw him around the time of our wedding. And it was quite a lot to get through.
Part two of our Melbourne trip will be in the next post.
Today's song:
AJR - I'm Ready
Then came Saturday and it was time for us to go for our holiday to Melbourne. I was not very excited to go on a plane, as i mentioned in my last post, but I found trying to take pictures out the window actually relaxed me and made the time go quicker. The first picture is the lower edge of WA were we went down to on our trip down to Pemberton.
I actually prefer flying during the day because you can see whats below you, instead of all the night flights i have been on when all you see is darkness and a few speckles of light.
On the first day in Melbourne we checked in to the hotel. Because it was late, we got our bearings to try to find our way to get some food. So we got recommended by the girl at the hotel front desk to go to an alleyway where there was nothing other than wall to wall restaurants. They had people standing outside every restaurant trying to get customers in to the restaurant they were working for. It was like no where I have ever been before and I can say for sure that I did not like to be hassled and asked to go in to places every five steps I took. But I guess its not everybody's cup of tea, they are just doing their job. However, as a person trying to quietly decide what to eat, it is quite a distraction and also quite frustrating. We ended up going in to one not too far in to the alleyway. The food there was pretty good and there was a lot of choice on the menu because they did a little bit of everything. I did end up feeling a bit on edge because i felt the only reason i was sitting there eating the meal was because i was trapped in to making a decision based on the fact i did not feel like getting hassled again. For me that's a huge thing that i normally would just walk away from. But since we didn't know what other options we had for food I ended up accepting it. Even if I did feel slightly confused and tricked.
After the meal we went back to the hotel and settled in a bit. The view from our hotel room was not the best because most of it was a building site but we didn't expect to have to look at it too much because we would be out and about allot of the time anyway.
The next day we decided to go to the Zoo so we found our way to buy a tram card for the trams. We also ended up buying some fruit and water so we could refuel just in case we didn't find anywhere good to eat in the zoo. The tram ride there was really nice. At firs we were going to walk to the zoo, but i am very happy we didn't because it took us quite a while to get there even on the tram. We paid our entry fee at the zoo and walked in. At first we got lost and the map didn't make any sense. But when we had walked around one side of the whole zoo, we got to the main entrance. Turns out that we entered through the back entrance built for people going there by tram, and we had been holding the map upside down the whole time because we thought we came through the main entrance in the first place. We decided to have some food and found a little spot with a few food places in a group. We decided to go to the zoo bakery and we were surprised how good food they had. The seagulls wanted in on the food too and we saw them grab chips from a family that didn't pay attention to their three year old boy's meal. We looked at almost all the animals in the zoo except the Australian animals section. It does not seem too interesting when you can see those kinds of animals anyway just by walking around. Below there is a few pictures, my favorites in the whole zoo were the butterfly house and the snow leopards.
On the Monday we went to the Melbourne Aquarium. They had a lot of interesting fish and reptiles. We walked through the shipwreck aquarium with half a sunken ship on the bottom where there was sharks and other really big schools of fish. You could pay a ticket price to go dive with the sharks, and i got a photo of a guy that was in there while we were having a look. I would never do something like that, even if I know the sharks would not be hungry.
After the aquarium that we went to Melbourne's royal botanical garden, before we even had a chance to go in we found a very sick looking bird sitting on the ground, a lady who walked past said the bird was there half an hour ago when she walked past last time and we felt bad about the whole thing so we called the rangers to come and help out. As we were waiting for them to get to were we were a lady showed up with two dogs and she knew someone in the area who had lost a bird recently. So she tried to get hold of the lady she knew to see if it could be hers. Then there was another dog that walked past and tried to grab the bird who got scared and flew up on the first branch in a tree, Still not looking good at all. We tried to talk to it so it would come down to us, but it looked almost half dead out of exhaustion. It was sitting there for a while as we were trying to figure out a way to try to catch it. The lady had not managed to get hold of the lady who had lost a bird. So we stopped a very tall guy who could try to reach the branch and try to pull it down lower for us to reach the bird. The pulling down went well but when we tried to catch the bird it spread it wings and half flew half tumbled away down the big grass area. The lady had tied her dogs leads to a pole and ran after the bird leaving us with her very upset dogs. A while later the rangers showed up and talked to us about what was going on. So we told them about the whole story that seems quite weird when you have to think about whats actually happened. The rangers said they could not help us if it was a bird, because they were almost impossible to catch even if they were really sick and tired.
After we had been standing there about fifteen minutes and telling the story to the rangers having two yapping dogs on the side. The lady came walking back with the bird wrapped in a clean diaper she had borrowed from a mom with a toddler further down the park to try to catch the bird.
She then got to take the bird with her in her handbag (after the rangers had taken a photo of the bird-in-a-diaper burrito) to go to the lady she knew to see if it was her bird.
That event cost us quite a lot of time from our time that we had intended to use in the Botanical gardens and we ended up having to walk through it quite quickly so we could go meet up with Dean in South Yarra. So i only took one picture along a pathway as we were walking.
When we finally met up with dean when he got of work we had a good time having dinner and talking for about three hours, and catching up on whats happened since last time we saw him around the time of our wedding. And it was quite a lot to get through.
Part two of our Melbourne trip will be in the next post.
Today's song:
AJR - I'm Ready
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