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Published: December 1st 2006
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Downtown Melbourne
Shot of the central business district or CBD of Melbourne Traveling to Oz
My flight from Hawaii left right near midnight and was about 9 hours in flight time till I touched down in Auckland. Now if I would have been able to sleep during those 9 hours, I would have awoken and had no effects of jet lag since with the 23 hour time change and losing a day, it was first thing in the morning in New Zealand. As it was though, I met a nice German girl who is travelling around the world competing in iron man competitions so spent the majority of the time talking to her. Made for a very quick 9 hours but also ment that I was screwing up my sleep schedule pretty good. Unfortunately for me, there wasn't enough time to transfer to the early flight to Melbourne so had to look forward to 8 hours in the Auckland airport for the afternoon fligh. I tried to catch a little shut eye during that time but didn't really get any.
The flight to Melbourne was just over 4 hours and the showed Pirates of the Caribbean 2 to pass the time. Getting through customes was surprisinglt quick and before I knew it,
Southern Cross Station
One of the 2 main train stations right on the edge of the CBD was through. Since I never booked a return ticket, I figured that I would have to show proof that I could buy a ticket if need be but they didn't ask at all. They only wanted an address of where I was saying and I all I got was a laugh at my atempted pronunciation of the place. After that it was a short wait till my friend Danielle came to pick me up and took me back to her place where I was crashing the first night.
First Week
The next day after a little breakfast and a latte, Danielle went off to work and I started getting things in order for my stay in Australia. Set up a bank account and then went shopping for a cell phone. Cell phone plans here are so much nicer then the crap we are offered in north america. no calls in the country are considered long distance and things like call waiting, voice mail, call display are all included with no extra charges. I settled on a vodaphone which is recommended by most people.
With my new cell phone in hand and bank card soon to be mailed, I
Flinders Street Station
The other main train station which was completed in 1910 and is the best known railway station in Australia. checked into the hostel I had booked for the next week which is at one corner of the downtown area and then spent the rest of the day just wondering around the city getting a feel for the place. I wasn't interested in doing the tourist thing just yet so was just enjoying the scenery. Melbourne was designed with wide streets in a grid pattern downtown to allow for the trams which have been running for 100 years now. I am really enjoying the city and haven't ventured out of the downtown area much yet since there is soo much to see.
There are tons of little shops, restaurants, bars, pubs all over the central business district and the really good ones are always down an alley or a seemingly out of the way place. You really can't judge places from the outside either and have to venture in for a pot (glass of beer smaller then a pint). This one place was just a door in the wall but inside was a full old victorian set up which was absolutely stunning. A very nice city to just relax and have a coffee while enjoying the atmosphere.
There
G20 Summit
Band playing at one of the barricaded streets. is currently a drought effecting the state of victoria and a few other areas. As such, none of the fountains other water restrictions are in place until they get some rain. I brought a little with me the first couple day but it hasn't rained since. They say the Melbourne will see 4 seasons in one day and that isn't far from the truth. The first day in the city was 14 degrees (very cool for them though I was loving it) with sun to start, then became very windy, followed by light rain which became heavy for a little bit then turned into hail! Other parts of Victoria got snow which is pretty much unheard of out of the mountains.
Some of the things I'm still getting use to in Australia are the traffic which as most of you know is driven on the left side of the road. I still look the wrong way first when starting to cross and probably should drive until I can at least get that down. They also have some "odd" ways of making turns here too though I'm told it is strickly a downtown Melbourne thing due to the trams running
G20
Tried to get a shot of all the cops protecting the one area where I assume the protesters got violent. down the center of the road. Left turns are easy and what you would expect, turning right though involves you pulling over to the left side of the road pretty much into the cross walk. Once the llight changes, then you can complete your right turn or hook turn as they call it. Another thing that I'm getting used to, again I guess since Canada use to be the same, is all the smokers. So many people smoke and you can smoke where ever unless you serve food on the premis, then you need to be 4 meters away from the building. I forgot how much your clothes reek after a night out or how much it bothers my eyes. They are in the process of changing the laws so sometime soon hopefully it will be like back home.
Danielle was having a big kick-off of her new company Luscious Liquids which markets organic skin and well being products. We met for a mid day coffee and then I gave her a hand setting up the room and also ended up serving drinks during the showings. They had a massage therapist and acupuncturist there to add to the event and during a little break between groups, I tried out a little acupuncture myself. She put needles in my hands, feet and head for relaxation but since I had been carting stuff up to the 3rd floor all afternoon and that had been my first time sitting in quite awhile, I'm not sure how much of the relaxation was from the acupuncture and how much was from finally sitting down. In the end, met lots of people had a lot of fun doing it too and I think the evening went really well for their company.
Nov. 18th and 19th was the G20 summit which was held downtown in Melbourne. They closed off the street on the thursday to traffic and put security in place for the event. I guess they didn't actually inform anyone though so anyone driving into work Thursday morning was in for a rude surprise. Some people took over 2 hours to get to work! On the Sat. as I was wondering around the city, I came across the protesters at one of the barricades where I assume they had had an incident. There were 2 lines of SWAT with around 150 police behind them and mounted police as well. When I got there, there was just a crowd with 5 people on various drums and congos jamming and making music so sat off to the side and enjoyed the beat for a bit. I walked around to the other areas and there was a band playing at another section and people voicing their opinions to stop the summit everywhere.
Over the weekend I met up with Adrian who I traveled around Euope on my tour there with and lives just outside the city. We basically made a little pub crawl going from one place to the next have a pot. We swung by the casino to hit some of the bars in there and was going to do a little gambling but decided to keep the crawl going. After a few more places, went towards St. Kilda which is the area right near the beach and a place with supposed good night life. I plan on switching to a hostel in the area soon so only hit the one place that night and will discover it more fully later.
I missed out on the spring racing carnival by one week so will have to see about hitting it up next year but a 50 annual event which is Australia's largest annual event. I was around for the last couple days but the missed the big week which is the first Tuesday of November being a holiday I think. On the weekend though, they had the Spanish festival where they close down a block near Brunswick (which is a great street for cafes and restaurants) and have traditional dancing while vendors make all the traditional food. Nice way to spend Sunday afternoon.
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Cecilia
non-member comment
Glad for the update
Very informative and good to hear about your last two weeks. Keep having fun.