DAY 1: Monday, November 13. MELBOURNE

Arrival!


It felt great to get off the airplane and stretch our legs. The airport was crowded.  Monday, we were later told, is the busiest day for international arrivals. This meant waiting in a series of lines with hundreds of people before we could exit the airport.  

After exiting, we took an UBER to our hotel in the Melbourne Central Business District (CBD). Then Madeleine met up with us at the hotel shortly thereafter.

The hotel is in a great location not far from the Parliament building and within walking distance of most everything we plan to do in the next few days. To get started Madeleine took us for a pick-me-up coffee on the way to the Fitzroy Gardens.  

Side note:  Melbournians take coffee very seriously.  Their obsession with coffee is even noted by Parisians as "la tendance Australienne." We plan try more coffee shops in the next few days.

At the Fitzroy Gardens we visited Cook's Cottage.  The cottage made the journey here all the way from Yorkshire, England.  It was taken apart with each stone and brick given a number and then shipped in crates and put back together in 1934.  

The relocation of the cottage was part of the effort to celebrate the centenary of the Australian state Victoria.  It was built by the parents of the explorer Captain James Cook.  In 1770, Cook, a Lieutenant, led an expedition in search of an  unknown southern continent (terra australis incognita). He landed at Botany Bay near modern day Sydney and claimed the land for Britain.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

DAY 9: Tuesday, November 21.

Image
Today was a transit day to the Great Barrier Reef.  We flew from Melbourne to Brisbane to Gladstone.  Tomorrow we take a boat for a three-day stay on an island.  The island has no cell phone service and limited wifi.  So the blog may not be updated until the weekend.
Read more

DAY 26: Friday, December 8. GOODBYE TASMANIA/HELLO AGAIN MELBOURNE

Image
We had an evening flight to Melbourne and enjoyed a few last stops along a drive through the highlands to the airport.  These included a roadside rest stop walk to look at pencil pines (an ancient tree related to sequoias) and colonial era buildings in two towns. One of the towns, Outlands, has a church by the same architect who designed the British Houses of Parliament. This town is also the location of a colonial era windmill.  Still in use to grind flour, it is the only working windmill in the Southern Hemisphere.  There is a contemporary scotch whiskey distillery and restaurant on the grounds around the windmill.  Ray tried some of the single malts at lunchtime.               Convict era Commissary House.
Read more

DAY 29: Monday, December 11. GOLD FIELDS

Image
This morning we went to an antique and flea market.  There was quite a collection of goods to look at! Afterwards we had a snack at a coffee house nearby and then went to another gold fields town. We walked around a lake where gold was discovered in this area.  Then we had a late lunch in the town center after a soak in the Hepburn hot springs. The Hepburn hot springs are the oldest in the region and date back to 1895. Then it was back to Melbourne where we are staying with Madeleine at her apartment in South Yarra.
Read more