Another big walking day! After breakfast at the house, we decided to depend on Melbourne public transportation since we’d be out past midnight and didn’t want to deal with driving in crowds downtown. Heather and Ryan left early and bought transit cards. Holly and I met them near the tram stop and we caught the first tram downtown. Was fun riding trams – running in tracks along the center of the street and powered by overhead lines. Fond memories of riding the “El” (elevated train) in Philadelphia when I was a kid. We took the train to the end of the line in downtown Melbourne (about 20-25 minutes) and started walking.
First stop was a bakery for coffee, an eclair and 12″ hotdog to sustain us for the next part of the day. We walked across the river and a couple of kilometers to the entrance of the Royal Botanic Gardens – which were beautiful! Wide variety of flowers, plants and trees from around the world – include Southern Magnolias, Eucalyptus and lots more we couldn’t identify. We walked through much of the gardens, but we’re disappointed that the Herbarium was a research facility and not open to the public. We took several photos of flowers we didn’t recognize and a nice young man in the information center with a strong resemblance to Chris Hemsworth identified them. I offered to take a photo of him with 90%)
Next to the Gardens is the Shrine of Remembrance, a monument to the Australian citizens who served (and died) during the first and second world wars. We have seen several displays and monuments in both NZ and Australia, but this was most complete and impressive. In addition to the size of the monument, the symbolism used in the different courtyards was very thoughtful and impressive – use of Morse Code on the panels to display a poem, different camouflage patterns specific to the conflict, a listing of every town in Australia who residents served, etc. The inside displays were also very personal and touching.
(note – the weather was beautiful today – temperatures started in the high 70’s and ended up around 60 – even at midnight)We split up at the monument – Ryan left to meet a friend from Cairns who was now living in Melbourne and Heather, Holly and I went in search of dinner. We caught another tram back to the city and Heather did the detective work to find a seafood restaurant. She found one with good reviews and we went in search of. The Google Maps app is a wonderful thing – we just followed our phone and we ended up at the entrance of a large fancy shopping mall. To make a long story short(er), we found the restaurant was actually on the third floor in a high end food court – and it was closed :(. We started heading for the exit and walked right past “Sushi Hon” which featured a “Sushi Train” or conveyor belt with plates of sushi traveling in an oval. So we had sushi for dinner – every plate was the same price and we stacked up ten places (plus a bowl of udon) before we were done – al kinds of great stuff – shrimp, salmon, scallops, tuna (sashimi). Note: photo below is rotated 90%
After dinner, we still had five hours to midnight, so we decided to take in a movie. Luckily, there was a movie theater (cinema) that was part of the shopping mall and we saw “Why Him?” with James Franco and Bryan Cranston – funny than expected. Hoping that I won’t be the Bryan Cranston role in the future. It was also nice to sit for a few hours. We met with Ryan around 10pm and headed to Flagstaff Park, one of the losonscations around the city with a stage, DJ, etc. By midnight, there were probably more than 7,000 people in the park – very laid back crowd – lots of families, large and small groups together, several hundred people dancing to the music and being shown on a big video screen. A few minutes before midnight, they stopped playing the mix on mostly 80’s and 90’s dance music and played some canned videos until the 10-second countdown at midnight. After the countdown, there was a 10 minutes fireworks show with fireworks be shot from both the park in front of us and the top of a high-rise building behind us – very cool effect!
After the fireworks, we joined the hordes of folks walking to cars and trams to go home.
Our family vacations 