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Published: March 13th 2011
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Kingdom Animalia
In this room, I wandered, pondered, and sauntered. Melbourne is by far the most enjoyable city I have visited in Australia. It melds the cleanliness of D.C. with the international flair and grandeur of New York. Public transportation is fast, affordable, and very convenient. I'm amazed the city is this large and this clean. The design of the downtown and city center, despite the fact that this is a very old city, is wonderfully modern. The buildings are fresh and new looking, with bright colors, and some wonderful architecture. Nighttime is lively, without feeling crowded or dangerous. It's been fantastic so far!
Food, Food Festivals, and Fresh Produce Markets
After spending months in Townsville, where you are lucky to get a half cooked steak and one slice of carrot for A$30, it's been a culinary dream here in Melbourne. Every corner has a cafe complete with homemade pasties, pies, and beverages. Steep competition drives the prices down, I enjoyed 5 plates of Gyoza and Chinese Dumplings (split with a friend of course) for $A24 total. Afterwards we went to
International Cakes , which actually specialized in Greek desserts as far as I can tell, and enjoyed coffee and a pasty for the same price I
Green Ants
Why was I not surprised to learn that the irritating green ants which live in Townsville spray you with acid after biting you? would usually pay for a muffin and small coffee at the campus coffee shop!
Nearly every street had a strip of restaurants from a different country- Thai, Greek, Turkish, Chinese, Japanese, Italian are all a short tram ride from where I am staying. There were also two festivals happening downtown "The history of food festival" and the "Greek Festival". Weekend festivals are so common, my friend confessed that the only hard part about finding entertainment is deciding what to attend.
Melbourne Museum
I spent today checking out the Melbourne Museum, which mostly focuses on natural history, although it was quite an eclectic overall! Despite dedicating a good five hours to perusing the displays, I only thoroughly explored about a quarter of the museum while lightly brushing the rest of it.
This museum has something for everyone - history, culture, science, and even a few live specimens. I began in the dinosaur section, checking out the skeletons of ancient creatures that once roamed Victoria. In addition to the typical displays of skeletal replicates, there were also auditory and video consoles which showed archeaologists digging up and setting casts of the ancient bones. There were also
Carlton Gardens
In the background is the Royal Exhibition Building, and the foreground is a grand fountain nearly two stories tall. excerpts from national geographic showing artist renditoins of what the dinosaurs looked like.
Much of the museum was dedicated to understanding the theory of evolution, and there was an area housing replicates of Darwin's texts, collections, and maps of his voyage around the world. Quite appropriately, this was housed near the most spectacular room I had ever visited. Here were taxadermy figures of hundreds of species from all over the world. In front of each collection, there were screens where you simply tapped the animal and an information bublle appeared. In addition to these panels, there were rotating screens where you literally pointed at an animal, touched the screen, and got an information bubble about it! I spent so long in this room that a museum worker started following me ....
There were also live specimins - a huge collections of spiders, bugs, and even some fish and amphibians! I was particularly pleased to see
Neoceratodus forsteri , also known as the Australian lungfish, which is the only species of lungfish in Australia and one of three such species in the world.
I could spend several posts detailing the amazing displays at the museum, but I'll just take the time to reiterate that there are some truly amazing sights here! I spent most of my time in the evolution and natural history portions, but there were also sections dedicated to the history of Melbourne, Indegionous art, Victorian climate, the mind and body, and even horse racing (Go Phar Lap!).
Royal Exhibition Building and Carlton Gardens
After the museum, I took a quick stroll through Carlton Gardens, which is adjacent to the Royal Exhibition Building. It was lovely, and I would have meandered for longer if it did not start drizzling. There happened to be a "longest lunch" event, which literally had one long table stretching for several blocks uninterrupted.
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