Last days in Melbourne :(

Last days in Melbourne :(

Melbourne, Australia, Australia

I’ve spent the last few days here in Melbourne tying up some loose ends. It is so easy to live in a city and say “I’ll do that sometime”, and then run out of time before you actually do it. That realisation came to me a couple of days ago, and I’ve tried to squeeze in as much as possible in the last few days. Unfortunately, I’ve been sick for the last week, so it’s not made the idea of doing anything very fun, but I soldiered through and did a few things.

The first thing I did was two days ago, I went to the Melbourne Museum to see the Tutankhamun exhibit that is touring the world. I got to see most of the artefacts that were pulled from Tut’s tomb, but because this stuff is always touring, we missed it when we were at the Egyptian Museum in Cairo. I thought this would be a great opportunity to see some more stuff up close and learn a bit more. I was very disappointed with the exhibit. First of all, I didn’t care for the $40 price tag they through on the entry ticket. And then the exhibit was broken down into ten rooms, and only three of the rooms had anything from Tut’s tomb in it. The other seven rooms were filled with stuff from other people’s tombs, therefore I believed they belonged in a different exhibit. I also didn’t learn anything new that our tour guide hadn’t taught us in Egypt, so I was very disappointed.

Then yesterday I went to the Old Melbourne Gaol, where the infamous Ned Kelly was inprisoned and hanged. I had gotten a free ticket to get into this museum a while ago but just kept putting it off. I had heard that it was one of the best things in Melbourne to see, so I finally went and was fairly disappointed with that as well. Only about a fifth of the original prison is still standing today, so you can’t get the full effect of what it was like back then. You could look into the cells and see that they were very small and not too comfortable looking, but I think once you’ve been to Alcatraz, all other prison museums/tours are going to pale in comparison. I read a few interesting plaques about other inmates that were kept there, and found some parts of it interesting, but I’m glad I didn’t have to pay the $22 to get in.

From the Gaol I went straight over to the Eureka Tower, which I’d already been up with Lisa a couple of months ago. I had also been given a free ticket to enter this, and I figured I might as well head up and see if I can get some pictures of a nice sunset with my new camera. Unfortunately, on a Saturday evening at sunset, the observation deck is probably the busiest place in Melbourne, and I just got annoyed really quickly when I was up there. The sunset wasn’t great, and I realised again that it’s tough to get pictures from these observation decks because it’s damn near impossible to take a picture through a window without getting the glare of a person walking by. Of course there were so many people up there that there was a constant glare and there was no way of avoiding it.

I met Lisa after my failed attempt at sunset pictures and we went for dinner in the Crown Casino for my last Saturday night on this continent. We had to wait a ridiculously long time to get served, but the food ended up being spectacular, so by the end of the meal I didn’t even care about how long we’d been sitting there for. We got some really nice desert cakes to take back to the apartment and I finished off the night on the couch with my awesome cookies and cream cheesecake. That’s something I could get used to.

Today is my last full day in Melbourne so I started off by packing up a lot of my stuff and cleaning part of the apartment. Lisa had informed me a few days ago that she had a surprise planned for me today, and we would be leaving at 12:30pm. I had been thinking about what it could be nonstop for the past few days, but I had never even considered what we ended up doing. Lisa treated me to a Christmas Dinner on the Restaurant Tram that goes all over Melbourne. It was amazing! We had first class service for over two hours on a tram car that brought us down to the beach, and then up to the Queen Victoria Market, and then through the city, while serving us a 5 course meal and all the drinks we wanted. We even got a little visit from Santa when we stopped up by the market and he brought little chocolate gifts, it was a nice touch.

So that was a great way to finish off my stay in Melbourne. The rest of today has just been spent packing up my backpack for my trip to Asia and packing my other bag to ship back home to Mom. Tomorrow is going to be a busy day of finishing up the packing and getting to the airport for the big flight to Singapore. As much as I have loved Australia, and I’ve seen some amazing things, I can’t wait to start this Asian adventure!! My next update will come when I step on to Asian soil for the first time in my life. Awesome squared!

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *