Australia: Melbourne

After a whirlwind two days of home inspections in Lafayette, CA, Mark and I headed out on our long trip to Melbourne. It was long and epic and mostly boring. But Virgin Australia is a fantastic airline! We had bigger seats with more leg room, even in economy. There were water bottle fillers in a couple of places throughout the cabin and USB ports for every seat-- even in economy.

Seat back on Virgin Australia

Sunday was mostly a jet-lagged blur but our first impressions of Australia and especially Melbourne were that it seemed remarkably like the United States. Melbourne's architecture reminded us a lot of Seattle and in general besides the money being different and people speaking with an accent, it just didn't feel that different. I won't lie-- we were kinda disappointed to have flown so far to find ourselves in a land that felt so oddly familiar. It was also really, really hard to adjust our schedules by 14 hours. All in the name of adventure though!

Waterfront near the Southgate center

Melbourne is located right on the water. Like I said, a lot of the architecture feels very similar to Seattle, though I don't think we captured any of the buildings very well. It was late fall in Australia too, meaning that the trees were changing colors and it was cold and windy!

Busking for gold coin

Of course, there were some major differences. Street buskers in Mellbourne and Sydney seem much more likely to be caught playing a didgeridoo than a violin or a saxophone.

Since Mark was in Melbourne primarily for a work conference, I did most of the sight seeing on my own. We did manage to sneak in some cool things in the mornings before the conference. One day we went to the famous Victoria Market, where some of the produce was HUGE (see those grapes next to the tangerines??) We also scored some rad souvenirs here. I would say this market comes the closest to comparing to Pike Place in scale and scope and quality, with a distinctive local flavor.

HUGE grapes!

Cheap but wonderful produce

Like I mentioned, I tried to make the most of my time while Mark was ambling through poster sessions and listening to talks. The highlight of my time in Melbourne was definitely the zoo! Aside from the normal lions and tigers and bears, I got to catch my first glimpse of some distinctly Australian fur balls.

Turns out wombats are adorable and almost never stop eating! 

The Melbourne Zoo is one of the best zoos I have been to. I think I must have missed my calling as a zoo keeper. If only I could have faced the memorization that biology classes would have called for! The Melbourne zoo has a huge emphasis on conservation and preservation. In addition, much of the zoo was landscaped to feel more like each animal's habitat, and I saw many gardens where it seemed like the zoo was growing a lot of its own animal feed.

Just a walkway through one of the exhibits! Cool! 

"Rainforest lore: Bring only curiosity, leave only footprints, capture only fotos,
take home only memory, help save our forest, terima kasih." 

 They also had some really cool educational exhibits. Below is a giant "washing machine" aquarium. It was all about phosphates and how we should use laundry soap that doesn't have them. I admit, I didn't even know phosphates were a thing to consider in the green discussion!

Fishy!

On our last day in Melbourne we hit up the Royal Botanic Gardens. Check this out:

I'm on the edge!

It seems like a lawn of some sort. But then we read the sign. And realized that what we thought was residual jet lag dizziness was actually the motion of the lake!  Watch: 

Sure enough a few moments later we caught these guys skimming the water and going fishing:

Water? Huh? 

 So we did the responsible thing and dipped our hands in to prove to ourselves that there really was water under that growth. It was super clean! Here's what the green stuff looked like:

Coolest lake ever!

After the morning at the botanic gardens, I snuck into the conference to watch Mark give his talk. He did great! And before we knew it, the conference was over and we had one last evening in Melbourne. We hit up the St. Kilda neighborhood and put our hands in the water. It's the other side of the ocean!

The beach in St. Kilda

We ended our week with a lovely dinner at a cute restaurant in St. Kilda (the food in Melbourne, though expensive, was all ahhhmazing and yummy.) And that was the end of our time in Melbourne. On Friday, after five days in Melbourne, we woke up early to catch our quick flight to Sydney. More on that later!