Southern Star Ferris Wheel -
This giant ferris wheel was completed in 2008 but was quickly closed due to structural issues due to metal warping in the hot summers here. It has been since closed and disassembled and is now being reconstructed...not sure when it will be reopened but its suppose to be one of the largest ferris wheels in the world standing at over 300ft tall. Should be fairly awesome but for now....an eye sore for the Docklands skyline and not the tourist draw that was it was suppose to be.
Day 1 (Saturday)
What a wrap! Two full days of sightseeing and exploring my
neighborhood was exhausting especially with my jetlag still in tow.
Apparently, it will be worse when I come back to the states, but I won't
worry about that until that time. Yesterday and today I played tourist.
With no social networks established it was ideal to take advantage of
what Melbourne has to offer for any tourist. I took to the city and took
advantage of all the free things that Melbourne is known for. This all
led to 3 observations: 1) Australians love their sports (footy (Australian
Rules Football) and rugby), 2) Melbournians love their coffee, 3) Australians
are into free things. With these three observations I will sum up how I
experienced them.
First off, I will
begin with my journey to Melbourne's busiest location, Federation Square.
Melbourne has the world's largest operating tram system (Think Light
Rail). It's every where and its privatized. Its rather pricey at
about 7 dollars US for 1-2 hours of riding; however, there is a free city
circle tram that is for tourists or locals who are too cheap to pay. Its
slow, but is nice as it does a complete loop around the city center in about 45
minutes with trams coming every 10-15 minutes. The other trams are
constant and ultra modern, where as the free city circle tram has vintage tram
cars from the turn of the century. Its also a very walk able city too.
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| Here's the route of the free tram. Simple and does a perimeter. The blue X is where I live. |
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| Here's one of the free vintage circle city trams...behind it is Hungry Jacks (Burger King) but they made it more relevant to the Aussies. |
In addition to their free city circle
tram, they also have a free tourist shuttle that does a complete loop of all
the city's major tourist spots. It comes every 25 minutes and takes a
full 90 minutes to do the entire loop. Its great for rainy days.
My arrival into
central Melbourne was on the Grand Final day of Australia's national sport,
nick named Footy. It's a complicated sport and was created for the sole
purpose of ensuring that the rugby players could stay conditioned during their
off season. It now is a full on professional sport and rugby and footy
are two separate sports. This national sport was played in Melbourne's
sports arena the MCG (Melbourne Cricket Ground) which seats over 100,000
spectators. The two teams that were in the Final was Melbourne's Hawks
and Sydney's Swans. Sydney's team won the finale. It was sad to see
all the disappointing faces of the home teams players. I was
able to catch a small glance of the game via Federation Square where they had
large TV screens up for fans to watch if they couldn't get tickets to the game.
Despite the weather being horrible (rain and more rain and cold (low 50s)
I was able to seek shelter at the numerous tourist and cultural venues the city
has to offer.
I began my tourist
journey at Federation Square's Information Center for visitors to Melbourne.
This state of the art facility has tourist guides that provide reservations
and personalized information on what to do while in Australia, Melbourne and
the surrounding region. This is where I got my list of places to go and
see and do over the course of my weekend. After I got my maps and
suggested locations of touring, I went to the two free museums at the same
location: The ACMI (Australian Center of Moving Images) and the National
Gallery of Victoria.
The ACMI, http://www.acmi.net.au/ has everything
you need to know how the media, tv, movies, technology...etc has influenced or
came from Australia. It was interesting and had a lot of interactive
exhibits.
The NGV, http://www.ngv.vic.gov.au/ is a
collection of modern and historical art of Australia. It has
multiple permanent collections and has a strong focus on Aboriginal
art. It’s very unique and has an edge towards contemporary art.
After spending a
few hours altogether at these two museums, I walked across the Princes bridge
over to the IGV (International Gallery of Victoria) and several of the
performing arts centers. I luckily dodged some of the wet weather during
an intermittent pause. At the IGV there was a special
exhibition of Napoleon going on; however, I chose to forgo it and take a look
at the free stuff. :) European art and modern contemporary art from other
countries are the permanent exhibits here.
The one gallery that is well known in this museum is its interior
architecture. Below is a photo of this
grand room.
After exploring this great gallery of art, I walked around the
river front for a brisk walk before it began to pour rain again. I then took short refuge in a small café in
one of the many arcades that Melbourne is known for. Throughout the central core of downtown
Melbourne are numerous arcades that house cafes, restaurants, shops and
malls. There’s a walking tour that I
took that covers 1.5 km of these arcades.
It’s a great walk to get an impressive perspective into Melbourne
culture: they love their cafes!
Coffee is one thing that Melbourne takes seriously; maybe even
more so than Seattle! There are few
Starbucks here as they haven’t taken off, most prefer Italian style espresso
rather than the drip coffee that America is use to, so there are hundreds of
sidewalk cafes.
One thing that I noticed at the conclusion of my first full
Saturday in Melbourne are that prices are very high compared to the
States. Food prices at supermarkets are
roughly twice to three times the cost of comparable items in the US. A six pack of beer from a bottleshop (liquor
store) is roughly 15 dollars where as I can get a bottle of wine a cheap as 7
dollars. I won’t be drinking here at all
or risk going broke!
Day 2 (Sunday)
Woke up extra early, the jetlag helped and I took to the road
early without any traffic on the road.
It was a quick and easy jaunt to Boeing Australia. About a 15-20 minute drive from where I am
living and its relatively easy. I hope to become a pro driving in this
city. Most driving rules in Australia is
similar to the US. The exceptions are:
No free left turns (as there is free right turns in the US) and in Melbourne
there are hook right turns. These turns
are unique to Melbourne and helps prevent cars from turning into the pathways
of the trams. Its very interesting to
see in action. If you are planning to
turn right across the path of a tram, you must position your car in a
designated box on the left side of the road and then proceed to cross the
intersection upon the green light going the direction you plan to go. Its rather complicated but hopefully the photo
below of the sign will explain it better.
After successfully navigating to my work location I parked the car
again and then jumped on the free circle city tram to wander through Chinatown
as well as Bourke Street central downtown.
Since it was relatively early still nothing was open, but the morning
provided lots of opportunity to explore without any crowds. Chinatown is fairly large but not as impressive
as San Francisco’s Chinatown. Melbourne
has a large population of Asians, roughly 16% or 500,000 of the city’s
population are Asian, with the two major ethnicities from India and China.
After walking through the empty streets of Chinatown, I walked to
Queen Victoria Market http://www.qvm.com.au/. On my way there I stopped by the State Library. This large and beautiful public library is a wonder and enjoyed the grand dome reading room.
After walking through and admiring the library I proceeded to Queen Victoria Markt and got to see what its like on a busy Sunday
afternoon. Luckily the rain stopped;
however, still very brisk around 50 degrees with a strong breeze. I am glad I brought my warm fleece as the
weather is similar to Seattle (Rainy, windy, and cold during spring). At the market, think Pike’s Place Market
times 100 you will find hundreds of stalls of produce vendors, meat butchers,
cheese vendors, bakeries, etc…as well as hundreds of stalls of items of cheap items
as fake Italian purses…wallets…etc. and other trinkets. The main event of the day though was the
market’s celebration of the harvest festival.
Hundreds of vendors set up their street food stalls and it was a smorgasbord
of Asian street food. It was heaven! I
filled up on Malaysian and lamb/chicken/beef satay. I will very much return to this market to
fill up on the produce and other food items…not so much inclined on purchasing
the trinkets…maybe a good place for souvenirs for those at home. J
After my fill and several walk throughs of the market I hopped
back on to the free circle tram and returned to my apartment. A good full weekend of exploring Melbourne to
get my feet wet was a success. I still
need to do plenty more, but made enough of a weekend to feel somewhat settled
and familiar with my new host city.
Side Notes (Random bit of observations):
-Graffiti here is rampant and the city has grasped onto it as an
art movement. Lots of the alleys and
arcades have some fairly impressive graffiti art.
-Size matters; everything is smaller here, portions, papertowels….etc
everything is smaller and not American sized at all.
-Burger King is called Hungry Jacks
-Soda here has real sugar in it or subsidized with Stevia (A natural sweetener! I sold this at Chempoint!)
-Internet is incredibly slow here compared to home and its capped
at a certain data usage.
-Melbourne citizens seem to dress up and are fairly stylish….equivalent
to those who live in San Fran or Chicago…lots of black and white.
-Australian TV for some reason has a liking to M.A.S.H. Its on all
the time here….they must get a kick out of the humor of it. Most TV shows are
American.
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