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Melbourne now

Friday, May 26, 6:21pm

A long couple of days. Yesterday was a beautiful day in Sydney. Absolutely gorgeous. Temperature in the 70's (or 20's as they call it here), blue skies, a nice harbour breeze... You couldn't script a better day for walking around and enjoying a city in a foreign country. My sister and I were talking about how beautiful the weather was for this time of year. We determined that, for the southern hemisphere, it was the equivalent of about our Thanksgiving; which is to say just about a month before the winter solstice. Anyway, it was beautiful. And to enjoy this beautiful weather, we decided to go to the Taronga Zoo which is across the harbour from Sydney. To get there, we had to go to Circular Quay and catch a ferry. Circular Quay is where the very first Europeans landed in Australia in the early 19th century. Aboriginal Australians look on this event with sadness and actually mourn it, but it is what it is, and now, Circular Quay is beautiful. Here is a panoramic picture I took of the Quay yesterday. (click to enlarge)

A koala bear:

Some kangaroos not boxing each other:

And here's a pretty sweet view of Sydney across the harbour from the zoo. Look at just how absolutely beautiful not only the view is, but the day as well.

After the zoo we showered and changed into some nice clothes and had dinner outside at Circular Quay while watching the sunset (and because my cameras battery had died and was charging at the time, I did not get pictures of the quay at night, but it was amazing) and then went to the Opera House to see a play. It was called The Hanging Man and it was brilliant. It was funny and moving and thought provoking. It was great. And plus, now we can both say that we've seen a play at the Sydney Opera House, which of course was the main goal in the first place.

And finally, this morning we said adieu to Sydney and got on a plane to Melbourne. I don't have any pictures from here yet, but I will soon. Its much more evident that its deep into fall here than it was in Sydney. Not even because of the temperature really, but just the way the city looks. Granted, we've only been here for a few hours, but there is a slightly more depressing aire to the city we agreed. Hopefully tomorrow will be nicer. However, Melbourne is about as far south as you can get on mainland Australia, so I can't say as we were really expecting it to be all that nice out. In our initial walking around today we went to the much anticipated (by me) Crown Casino. Casinos in Australia, by the way, are very prevalent. We noticed this from day one in Sydney. I'd say at least one in every three bars have slot machines. And this full casino down the street from the hotel is ginormous. It's bigger than both of the casinos in Niagara Falls combined. And, get this, they had a Casino War pit. I couldn't resist, so I sat down and played for about a half hour. I started with A$100 and left the table when I had A$185. Awesome. Casino War. Gotta love it. And after that we went to the Immigration Museum which I was looking forward to seeing. You figure, Australia is all immigrants so an Immigration Museum is really the story of how Australia populated itself from the beginning. So I'm glad we got there. So that was today up to this point. More tomorrow, I'm sure.

Posted by Mike at May 26, 2006 04:21 AM