Melbourne, Australia

After a bit of a rough start- including security taking away our peanut butter because it was a "gel" (if it doesn't move when you turn it upside down, I'd consider it more of a solid, but whatever) and having to apply for a visa at the international assistance desk (we didn't know that you have to get a visa to go to Australia- seriously, no other English speaking country in the world requires a visa for Americans!)- we arrived in Melbourne. It was just a brief stop in Australia on our way up to Thailand, but we ended up liking Melbourne. We stayed with a lovely couple just a short tram ride out of Melbourne- yes, trams are a valid form of transportation in Melbourne- and there is tons to do there!

 Our first two days consisted of sightseeing in downtown Melbourne. We went to Federation Square, an odd juxtaposition of several different building styles, then stumbled across an awesome carillon playing songs we almost knew, and some that were just cacophony.

We went to two different public gardens: the Royal Botanic Gardens and Fitzroy Gardens. Both were beautiful, offering us a look at Australian vegetation as well as several encounters with some unique birds, such as one that I dubbed the "blue chicken", finding out later that it's called a "purple swamp hen" (I was so close!), which we were shocked to discover was a water bird! We also went to two different cathedrals- St Patrick's was absolutely gorgeous and is quite possibly my new favorite cathedral in the whole world. We made a stop at the Shrine of Remembrance, a comprehensive war memorial designed such that at 11 AM on Remembrance Day (November 11), a beam of light hits the word "Love" on the stone of remembrance inside the shrine.

Queen Victoria's Market was another interesting stop- there was a variety of Australian things, including didgeridoos, boomerangs, and Uggs =P. We also went to see the "National Opal Collection", which was of course just a store, but they did give us a free gift as tourists, and it wasn't totally lame! We didn't know that Australia produces about 97% of the world's opal. Nor did we know that opals are somehow related to dinosaur fossils, but apparently that is true too.

The next two days we spent sightseeing in the greater Melbourne area with the help of our hosts Sarah & Nathan. They took us to the very interesting Footscray Markets, a noisy food market which reminded me very much of the markets in Spain. We went for a walk along the river, where I had a bit of an unfortunate incident with a "flying fox" (aka zipline); that combined with rain ended our walk a bit early. The two highlights came on our last day though- the Healesville Animal Sanctuary and the St Kilda penguins! The Healesville sanctuary is home to all sorts of native Australian animals: the wallaby, kookaburra, Tasmanian devil, platypus, echidna, and of course the kangaroo! We even saw a herd of wild kangaroos on the drive to the sanctuary. Kangas in Australia are much like deer in the US- they live in herds, you spot them frequently in large fields, and hitting one while driving is a common and dangerous occurrence. But we still thought they were pretty cute. =)

We went straight from Healesville to the pier at St Kilda to see the nightly return of the wild penguins! We waited on a boardwalk until just after sunset, when the penguins began to return from their adventures in the ocean to their nests in the rocks. They were completely adorable! However, you couldn't use a camera flash, and you could only use a flashlight if it was covered with a red filter, so our only penguin picture looks a bit like a mars penguin. Still, it was fun- we got great views of the Melbourne skyline, and they are wild penguins, after all!

Check out the complete album of Australia pictures on the "Pictures" page!