Does it get any better than this???
That accurately describes our day today. We had a trip planned
which takes us on a 4 hour tour of the city, giving us a little time in
a couple of places to explore.
We saw the whole city from a bus, and stopped off at a garden where
Captain Cook's English cottage has been transplanted. A nice little
cottage, see:
We saw the gardens, the various business and governmental buildings, heard the history (found in 183x by a guy who came over from Tasmania and said "this appears a good place for a village" and Melbourne was born...) and got a feel for the city. Overall, it's not as seedy as it appeared, but we haven't changed our judgment that if you've had enough of NYC then you don't need to come here. It's Australia's answer to New York.
Got a nice picture of the city from their biggest war memorial, the
"Shrine of Remembrance", a tribute to those they lost in WW I originally,
now dedicated to all who've lost their lives in Australia's service.
Here's the city with some shots of the memorial:
Saw some other places of worldwide importance too:
Although the driver confirmed that the locals don't really drink Foster's
- it's an export beer.
Yesterday, while we were at St. Paul's Cathedral I saw a poster for a Dead Sea Scrolls exhibit, which we didn't find in our walks. But we saw another sign for it today during our tour, so we knew which building to look for this time.
Apparently the Israelis have loaned some of the scrolls to their national
gallery as part of the world celebration of the Olympics, and they're still
here. Too interesting to pass up since we were only 5 blocks away,
we went to see the exhibit. A nice exhibit, and awesome to see parts
of those scrolls up close. Of course we couldn't take pictures but
we did pick up an exhibit book which we'll bring home:
In our walk over to the Gallery we also saw this building which we thought
was pretty cool:
Not sure what it is but it was pretty interesting.
Tomorrow we're gone all day on a road trip to the southern coast - it will take us along the Great Ocean Road, which was built in the early 1900s through Torquay, Apollo Bay, the Port Campbell National Park, Twelve Apostles, Loch Ard Gorge, and "London Bridge"- apparently a natural stone formation.
We should have some good pix from that trip posted before we leave. One more full day here, then we're on our way back! I think we're ready to come home.
See you soon!
Us