Paying my respects.

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Let start of where I ended last.

15 Hours I slept. As i Mentioned in my previous blog I was unable to get rid of much clothes so I woke up amazingly sweaty and as a result of that quite smelly ;P

When I packed my bag I decided against bringing a towel thinking it was just extra weight that I could buy here.
Me and my sleepy head got out of bed and pretty much went straight towards the shower without thinking had a shower.
Once I was done I went to grab my towel... Oh yea I forgot that, Using my dirty shirt I dried myself off and went downstairs to the lounge.

Had about 5 cups of tea as I was major dehydrated and started feeling dizzy, I was sure this was because I hadn't eaten anything in a long time. I grabbed my phone and checked where the nearest super market was, about a 10 minute walk. Alright I can do that. I headed towards the super market and arrived quite quickly had a little look around me and quickly realised food in Australia is a lot more expensive than it is at home.

I grabbed some cherry tomatoes some bread, peanut butter and a bottle of drink - 10 Dollars. This was a home brand bottle of lemonade and half a bread 😞. Thats about 6 Euros but in the Netherlands i'd pay max 4 euros for that.

As i felt dizzy and didn't know if there were any other super markets in the area I sucked it up and headed back to the hostel where I ate.

Once i'd eaten I felt slightly less dizzy. Today my plans were to go to the shrine of remembrance.
I sorted out how to get there - walk about 5 minutes to a tram stop get on wait 15 stops (about 18 minutes) and walk another 5 minutes. Oh thats not to bad i thought to myself and headed to the tram. The tram came straight away, I scanned my Myki card and on my way I went. When I got of the tram I quickly noticed the shrine of remembrance and headed over there.

I was and still am amazed at the size of it. Its a beautiful temple like building in remembrance of all people that had fallen during the world wars (mainly the first world war).
The temple has a beautiful well kept garden around it with a couple of statues of soldiers. I headed up the stairs to get closer to the shrine and noticed I could go inside it, when you walk inside you walk into a big chamber with flags hanging around and along the walls were old books with names in them all in alphabetical order of all the people that gave there lives in the wars. There were thousands of names in there and it's hard to believe how many people really died during the wars.

As I walked around I noticed you could go downstairs, once I went downstairs I found even more flags and a lot of information. There is an entire museum under the shrine where you can find loads of information regarding both wars and how Australia was affected by it. One thing is sure if I ever come back here I'll be taking my dad to see this shrine, he would love to see it. If you went down another floor they had a little gift shop. I headed backup and noticed stairs towards the roof of the shrine and stood on top. Perfect Photo spot. From the top you could see the gardens and the statues of the soldiers, you could see an eternal flame. Some guy came up to me and asked if I could take his picture and offered to take mine. I headed back down the stairs and stood in front of the shrine.

From there I decided to check if anything on my list was in the area so I could see if I could head over there. Before I flew over I decided to download the map of Melbourne so I could see exactly how far everything was.
To my surprise the royal botanical gardens of Melbourne were less than a 5 minute walk away so i headed over there.

Now here is a part that is very hard for me to type and its something you just really have to see. The royal botanical gardens were beautiful they have plants and trees there from all over the world. They have little signs there explaining what every single plant/tree is. They have signs pointing all over the park and they have the park sorted in regions where you have an Asia region, South America region, Australia region etc etc. I followed the signs and went to every single region some trees there must of been 100+ years old just by how huge they were. I know that if my mum lived close to these gardens she would be found here every single day! There were loads of sounds of birds and other animals. There was a little lake where there was little birds? I'm quite unsure what they are but they look like chicken and ducks combined.

I walked about 12 Kilometres in that park and found it had a little tea room as well. I decided to have a sit down where I had some coke and an ice cream (also major expensive). Once I had finished that I headed back towards the metro and went back towards the hostel. Once I arrived back at the hostel I grabbed my laptop and wrote my first blog post which took me about 2 hours :P. I hadn't eaten in quite some time and realised all the shops were closed to get evening food so i headed over to some restaurant where I ate an amazing hamburger and some chips.

I headed back to the hostel still pretty jet lagged and tired from all the walking so I decided it would be an early night for. I let everyone know I was okay and told them about my day and headed to bed.

I'll pick up from here next time 😊 Thanks for reading once again.

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