I come from a land down unda

For anyone that doesn't know, I've been in Australiar, in Melbourne to be specific, for the past week (yes I know I spelled Australia with an 'r' at the end, you're supposed to read it that way). I left Australia today and flew to Auckland, New Zealand and let me just say that I fell in love with New Zealand after being here for about 1/2 hr.

But back to Australia and getting to Australia. I was there for work, so this isn't some exotic dream vacation I'm on even though it sounds like it is. I'm going to give you a lengthy travelogue now, so buckle up. Or hit Alt+F4 on your keyboard now...

My first flight left SLC at about 9:15am Friday the 1st. It was 45 min late because we had to be de-iced. From SLC I flew to Dallas (about a 3hr flight). Then I waited about 4 hours and flew to LAX (another 3hr flight). Then I waited about 6 hours and flew to Melbourne (supposed to be 15hrs but was closer to 16 due to weather). I got into Melbourne at around 10:30am Sunday the 3rd. Now that's a long day right there. My body subsequently hated me the rest of Sunday until I let it get some quality Tylenol PM aided sleep.

The first thing I noticed when I was on my way to my hotel about Australia, is all the Australian looking trees. They were the stereotypical trees that you see on TV when you see Australia and they were all over. I think they're Eucalyptus trees but I could be wrong.

I got to my hotel Sunday which was right in the heart of downtown Melbourne and the room was on the 9th floor with a balcony looking right across at an office building and an alleyway down below. I'm sure some office workers got an eye full when I'd forget to pull the shades down and change.

Here are a few pictures of my room. It was a really modern studio apt. The only weird thing about it really is that there were these weird airy, vailish looking drapes that were pulled around the bed when I got there.

Here's without the drapes. The frosted door is the bathroom.














And here's with the lovely drapes pulled.

A couple other pics.

The hotel had a pretty decent gym actually that I used a few times. I wanted to make Lindsey proud.

I had to sit there with my phone before starting an exercise and convert kg to lbs because multiplying numbers by 2.2 is hard when all you want to do is just move heavy weights around.






On Sunday I just went out and walked around the city. Sunday afternoon is a dead time in Melbourne so there wasn't much to see, but here's a few pictures I took.

I just thought this Welsh church was a cool little church.

This is the state library.

Bell tower top of a building in the main town center area of Melbourne.

This drawing of a beautiful young lady is a sample of some of the cool graffiti art in some of the alleyways near the towncenter.

I worked with the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology - Publishing Group while I was in Melbourne and the people there were all really nice to me. I'm always worried if I go to another country that they'll hate me simply because I'm American, but they seemed to like me despite that. The lady that I worked with the most, Judith, is actually Scottish. She hadn't ever seen So I Married an Axe Murderer, so I challenged her to watch it. I don't care if the Scottish parts of the movie are completely culturally inaccurate, it's some funny stuff.

Judith was nice enough to take an evening and go out to eat with me and one of her co-workers. We walked up to this street called Lygon St which is basically the Little Italy of Melbourne. The street is a row of mostly Italian shops and probably at least 25 restaurants. They all have seating inside but most people chose to eat outside on the sidewalk when the weather's good. It's a really cool atmosphere. We ate at this place called Dimattinas and I had Fettuccine Pollo with avocado. It was very tasty.

Here's some pictures I stole of Lygon St. and Dimattinas.

On Friday night, Judith invited me over to her house for a proper Aussie barbecue. Her husband Niel is Australian and male obviously, so naturally, he did the grilling and no, we didn't eat kangaroo. The steak was really good, and perfectly done. We even had a good Aussie thundershower roll through after our dinner.

On Saturday, I did my tourist stuff and went around the city on the free tourist trams and buses.
I got to go up to the 88th floor observation deck of the Eureka Tower and see the view. The 88th floor is 285m or 935ft. The elevator to get to the 88th floor is a high speed elevator and gets you up there in less than a minute. I think it came out to roughly 20mph which in an elevator, is blazing fast. I had to swallow hard every 10 seconds to keep my ears from exploding.

They have this little glass cube that's about 9ft by 6ft or so that they call the Edge. You can pay to get into the cube and it starts out inside the building with frosted glass. It shakes a little and makes creaky noises and moves out of the building and then suddenly the frosted glass turns clear and you're in a glass box 900ft up. its pretty weird to be able to look down and see nothing for 900 ft. The effect is even better if you lie face down on your stomach.


They wouldn't let you take pictures inside it because they didn't want people to drop cameras and scratch the glass. Oh, and that also allows them to take your picture and charge you a gazillion dollars for it.
Then I made a long 5k (3.2mile) walk down toward the beach. It was overcast by the time I set out and by the time I got to the beach, there was a misty rain and it was really windy out on the pier I went out on.

Here's a picture I took of people playing what I think was bocce ball, but who knows. Don't they look all official and uppity?

Me taking a picture of myself with my phone in the rain and wind.

I hate asking people to take pictures of just me so some of these I just set the camera on a wooden post and used the timer.

This is the restaurant building at the end of the pier. The original actually burned down in 2002 so they rebuild it exactly to spec.

Kind of a cool picture of the beach and a lighthouse.

I was walking to get a taxi after the beach and I thought this was weird how they stacked the boats so I took a picture.

On Saturday evening I went out again to walk around and get some souvenirs for the kids. I got a boomerang and a kangaroo and koala hand puppet. I also stopped and got myself some tasty gelato. Traveling can be cool but its not nearly as fun when you're alone. I just got to Auckland this evening and it looks like a really cool place. I walked down on the beach in my bare feet right after sunset and there were people in the water still, and out and about. It was cool. I don't work until Tuesday so I'll take tomorrow to spend some time taking pictures and enjoying the area.

Here's one last picture from Melbourne. This is Flinders St Station.