March 30th marked the beginning of my 2-week mid-semester break. Kaitlyn and I planned a trip with the Student Travel Agency at our universities to spend a week in Cairns. But before that began, I boarded a flight for Melbourne, Victoria to meet up with my best friend and travel buddy, Kaitlyn, first so she could show me the city she had been living in for the past three months.
The plane ended up being half and hour late and poor Kaitlyn was waiting at the Southern Cross Station for me for fourty-five minutes. We had a good laugh over the circumstances (since it seems that none of my flights this year have gone smoothly) and went out for lunch at a small cafe on one of the main streets in downtown Melbourne. We had some great fish and chips, as well as some amazing coffee and caught up on the time we'd been away. Afterwards, we spent some time walking around through the centre of Melbourne. Since Kaitlyn's university was an hour from the centre of the city, I decided not to waste a day of sightseeing and my luggage ended up coming for a tour.
Luckily, I was smart and bought a rolling suitcase before the trip.
We walked past the Art Gallery, Flinder's Station, Federation Square - which is a large open plaza used as a gathering place and has a stage for performances and plenty of little cafes - and along the river where I got a great look at the some of the skyscrapers.
The Art Gallery.
Flinder's Street Station.
Federation Square.
A closer look at the awesome architecture found in Federation Square.
A view across the river.
We decided Melbourne was boring and we should go to Paris.
That didn't take long at all!
Just kidding! Turns out there is a tall structure in Melbourne that is reminiscent of the Eiffel Tower in Paris. Did it fool you?
Being serious, Melbourne is actually a beautiful city and was rated the number one most livable city in 2011, with Vancouver coming in third. My tour guide on the Great Ocean Road day trip made a point of telling me so. The city is filled with interesting architecture, a great amount of greenspace, and plenty of great places for people. It seems that no matter where Kaitlyn and I walked, we managed to find hidden gems. One of which was the beautiful grafitti and other artwork that we found down alleyways.
Some great artwork. Both sides of the alley had been painted.
Of course, being Landscape Architecture students, we had to visit the Botanical Gardens during my visit as well and we spent a few hours on the third day doing so. I definitely had mixed feelings about the gardens in Melbourne. There were so many great design ideas, unfortunately didn't live up to their full potential once constructed. There were some areas that were done well, but others left me feeling a little disappointed at the outcome. Here's a bit more detail (CAUTION - lots of landscape pictures ahead):
The Grotto.
The Grotto was a great little garden that as you can see from the picture looks great. There was a concrete stream bed running through the entire garden with a waterfall to the right of where I took the picture, however these were not filled with water. As well, what the picture does not show were the steel posts that were placed at many of entrances and starts of paths. Now for those of you thinking that perhaps we were not supposed to enter the grotto, there was one entrance near the bottom that was unobstructed. It seems to me that this area was meant to be shared, but it doesn't make much sense if you can't walk through the space to experience it. Finally, once we made it through the garden and came out on one of the pathways, it simple ended at the culvert at the edge of the garden onto a large lawn. There was no link back to the main pathway. Great idea, bad execution.
Entrance to the Botanical Gardens
This was the one of the entrances to the botanical gardens (the grotto is just to the right) and it looked great except for the sharp spikes sticking out around the arch. It wasn't particularly inviting, or more importantly, safe. Here's a closer look:
My hilarious grimace face.
Here's another one of the design fails: the massive pond:
The pond.
"Wait, what pond? All I see is grass," you say. No, that is not grass. I think it's supposed to be water. I don't think it was supposed to be that green. Or smell that bad either.
Movable benches.
Unfortunately this is not supposed to be a work of art. The benches around the gardens were not mounted. I think the lesson to take away from this is that movable chairs/benches work in some places but not others.
Who grafitti's a tree!?
Well onto a more positive note, here's a look at all the great aspects of the Melbourne Botanical Gardens. :)
Boardwalks = always awesome.
Benches in the form of surfboards? Cool. (I think that may be as close as Kaitlyn gets to surfing in Australia).
Footprint imprints along the pathways? Nice touch.
I thought these looked like Velociraptor footprints, but maybe that's just me.
What a great entranceway.
I absolutely loved the gardens surrounding the volcano.
At the top of the volcano (which was filled with water).
Lots of birds of paradise!
One very large tree that added great character to the landscape.
The Temple of the Winds
The Temple of the Winds was by far my favourite part of the botanical gardens. To explain, my favourite book series is The Sword of Truth by Terry Goodkind. The fourth book, The Temple of the Winds was one of my favourite in the series. To say I was quite excited to find it in the botanical gardens is an understatement!
I still find it amazing how each city in Australia has its own unique character. It was great to see and explore Melbourne, especially with my awesome travel buddy Kaitlyn. The final day in the state of Victoria was spent at LaTrobe University suntanning on the grass and relaxing before heading off to Cairns, Queensland for a week.
