Last Day in Melbourne 15/09/2012

My last day here started at around 3am, when the guys living one floor above our dorm started to tear their room apart. I don’t know whether they were drunk, on drugs, or just stupid motherfuckers, but it was so bad that my bed was shaking. I kept hoping for them to maybe start jumping out of the window or just killing each other in their weird frenzy, but unfortunately they decided to stay alive and keep making noise. When I had to get up at 8am, they had only just settled down. But staying in bed much longer wasn’t an option because the check-out time was 10am.

I had some breakfast at the hostel (eating my kiwi fruits because they aren’t allowed to leave the state) and then went to walk through all the parks and gardens left on my list. Australians are very good at the whole parks/gardens thing. It was a bit warmer today, still very grey, but at least we didn’t get any more rain. Since I only had a couple of parks left and my train leaves for Sydney at 8pm, I took my time and it was nice to not have to rush through today’s agenda.

First stop were the Alexandra Gardens, which were neither big nor especially beautiful, so I just walked though them and moved on to the Queen Victoria Gardens soon after. Now these gardens were a lot more interesting. Not only were there more trees and flowers in bloom (again, the smell!), but there are also a number of statues, ponds, and memorials that are very lovely to look at and take photos of. Crossing one more street, you get to the King’s Domain, a large park with not too many flower beds but lots of trees and grass. There is a big, fancy statue of King Albert in front of the music bowl, and a little further along the way there is a garden to honor the Pioneer Women, which is shamefully small (from a feminist’s point of view), but still pretty enough with a fountain, and little cherry trees that are in (white) bloom right now.

The last thing on today’s list was the Botanic garden, which must be about five times the size of the one in Adelaide. It was beautiful and they had an incredible variety of plant, and once more, so many wonderful flowers, but I honestly liked the one in Adelaide a bit better, because it felt more centralized, and better looked after than this one. Still, I spent a lot of time trying to see as much of the garden as possible, and only stopped when my feet started to hurt and I got really tired (thank you, crazy guys!). I took hundreds of photos of the pinkest blossoms I have ever seen and also tried to capture some of the gigantic trees. I just hope it will come across in the photos.

I’ll leave my luggage at the hostel till later this afternoon, and spend some time writing and waste some more time on youtube etc.

Next stop is Sydney.