Such a small world

After a long night of traveling, time got away from us this morning and we accidentally slept in until 10 o’clock. Since our day was already beginning to slip away from us, we had to rush to get ready and head out the door after chatting a little with Sean and his girlfriend ,Tegan. We actually found out that Sean had studied abroad at NC State last year during the same time that Riley was there and Tegan had done the same at ECU. Such a small world sometimes! The first stop on our sight-seeing list was the Shrine of Remembrance, which was a huge temple like structure built to honor the soldiers during WWI.

As we made our way inside the shrine, we found out that you could climb the stairs to view the city from the top (granted that’s not what it was made for). The view from the top was phenomenal!

After a couple pictures, we took in the sight for a while before we headed back down to learn a little more about the shrine. There were diamond shapes all around the shrine that had different attractions, so we decided to pick one out to see what they had in store. Lauren picked an awesome area, because it ended up being a room full of medals!

Once we admired the medals for a while, we ended up going next door, where we found yet another Botanical garden. I don’t know about Lauren, but I’m about flowered out! I think she was too, because we ended up not staying long at all! Turned out to be a good thing because right when we stepped outside, the visitor shuttle came around; best thing of all it was free! Beside moving at a snail’s pace, the bus was awesome! It took us around Melbourne for a little, telling us information about the city. Did you know that the top ten floors of the Eureka Building in Melbourne is coated with 24 caret gold in honor of the Melbourne gold rush? Yea, we didn’t either until we took the bus. The real reason we hopped on the bus is because it took us to the Queen Victoria Markets, which was almost halfway across the city! It took about 30 minutes (remember, snail pace) to get to the markets. These markets were crazy huge, must be twice the size of Sydney’s! Since we have become pros at the Sydney market, we used our up and down row method to check out everything. Lauren ended up finding some really cool things that she was happy about! Since much of the market was like Sydney and repeated itself, we decided to venture off and check out other spots in Melbourne. The next being the bath house, which Lauren and I still don’t know what it is.

After taking a couple pictures of the Bath House, we followed Sean’s advice and went to check out the Old Melbourne Gaol (not a typo, that is how they spell jail). When we arrived we found out that they had an entry fee of 20 dollars and Lauren and I didn’t feel like paying that just to see a jail, so we made some of our own fun!

We soon broke out and fled to a place where we were sure they wouldn’t find two criminals – The State Library of Victoria! It was a perfect place to hide out too because it is so big! There are probably over 10 stories to this library, with some floors dedicated to listening and chess!

Since the police stopped looking for us, we decided to explore the streets of Melbourne again and soon stumbled upon China Town. Just like Sydney, this China Town was only one street, consisting of many things Chinese (yea, yea, I know – stating the obvious). There were many cool temple like walkways that would have been super cool at night.

After China Town, we were planning on going to the Parliament house, but it was closed due to construction so we ended up checking out a cathedral that we had been wanting to see - plus it was right behind the Parliament House. We rounded the corner and I didn’t see anything, but after a couple of steps you could see the huge steeples! We soon decided that we wanted to head back to Sean’s to get some grub – fish and chips had been on both of our minds.  After dinner, we headed to Luna Park (Melbourne style), but unfortunately it was closed, so a trip to the beach it was! St. Kilda beach was peaceful at night, and Lauren and I both agreed that we could fall asleep listening to the waves (we didn’t though). We soon headed back to meet two German girls who were also couch surfing at Sean’s place. We all talked for a little, but conversation came to an end when we all got tired.