Melbourne - City

We've decided to dedicate the final day in Melbourne to the city area itself. Hailing from Singapore, we'd certainly want to see how different it is city life in other countries compared to Singapore.

The streets of Melbourne.

The day was meant to be free and easy... which meant that we slept in and woke up at 9am(surprising, considering when in Singapore, sleeping in would mean waking up at lunch time). Yi Wang found a few possible walking routes in the city and asked us to print the maps.

Girls hard at work printing maps.

After that we headed out to pick up the rest and returned the car(also a little matter of a fine we received the night before).

Our tour guide of the day - Pinky, was already at the car return center waiting for us.

Tour guide and one of the tourists.

We first went to the Melbourne Central Station to see the preserved clock tower.
The more appropriate description should be the CLOCKLESS-clock tower though. Because that's what it really was, just a tower without any sign of clock on it.

We also made a brief stop at the Victoria Library and did what tourists usually do:

Why take picture of course!!

Being the ever diligent tour guide she was, Pinky already had a brunch place in mind. And what more appropriate than showing us at the same time what made Melbourne... well, Melbourne!

The back alleys filled with shops and cafes!

We had our brunch in this cosy little shop(no clue what name it is though) which served awesome awesome egg florentines(with nice and crisp bacons too)!!
Despite looking rather small in portion, the brunch was very very filling and we all walked out full and happy.

What really struck me was how well they preserved and retained their old buildings in the modern setup. The old buildings had seamlessly integrated into the modern city and rather than standing out, they became a part of the city... only to be noticed when one really pays attention.

Okay they actually do stand out a little.

It helped too that they have some really pretty buildings:


While most of their buildings do not stand out too much, the same could not be said about their transports. They have
trams
and horse carts to chauffeur you around. The tram was somewhat expensive, the horse cart VERY expensive. But it was still a novel experience to see horse carts going about among the cars in the middle of the road. Wonder if I will have the money to take the horse cart the next time I come back to visit...

Before long we arrived at the Federation Square,
apparently a place where many people chill out and relax at.
And picnic too!! Beware of watchful birds though, they might steal your food.

During our walk, we found a pretty city view:
with ugly cars distracting us from the view.

Then we started our little park walk:

with their fair bit of statues:

along with a Wai Seng!

We were then greeted by these Arnold lookalikes.

Arnie!!!!

It's no coincidence that they were in military uniforms and held weapons. After all, we were arriving at the War Memorial Building.

"Do Re Mi Mi Re Do"

The war memorial is a... memorial for all the Australian soldiers involved in all the wars in the past. It's their way of ensuring that the sacrifice of the fallen soldiers does not go unnoticed.
Something special about this plague: There's an opening on the top of the building and once every year, the sunlight would fall on the word "Love". How cool is that?

We went to the rooftop and was greeted by this rainbow from an earlier drizzle:
as though it's telling us that the rain was over and good days were coming(how fitting for a graduation trip).

But rain again it did and we had to retreat into a museum. There Wai Seng found something he loved:
Clearly he has a thing for saggy boobs...

Melbourne - Phillip Island part 2

Shortly after visiting the Koala Conservation Center, the drizzling became heavier. We had no choice but to retreat to a sheltered place - The Amazen Things.
It wasn't in our plan initially because we wanted to go to the Nobbies to see seals, also there was another issue of time constraint since we only had about an hour to spare before the penguin parade.

The Amazen Things brought back the kids inside us with all the mazes and quirky funsies. First we were climbing on a slope,
which supposedly distorted our sense of balance though I personally didn't experience anything unusual.

The slope also meant that we could perform some gravity defying illusion, like this:
That's a Michael Jackson move right there yo!!

After that Wai Seng got thoroughly confused by this big big lollipop:


After that we went on to the mirror maze and boy do I love mirrors!!

Sadly from the pictures above, Elaine and Wai Seng didn't quite share the same sentiments as I did. After about 5 minutes of walking and probing, we found our way out of the mirror maze... except Yi Wang:
We had to break the glass and haul him out of the mazeHe joined us shortly after finding his way out of the maze.

And then we got hungry:
Like... really really hungry...
that we didn't get disgusted seeing our friends' heads being served as food.
But Yi Wang didn't mind his head being served as food at all judging from his brilliant grin.

We fooled around a bit longer to kill time before running back to our car and sped our way to the Penguin Parade.
We had to be at the beach roughly one hour earlier before the penguins came up the shore. Why? We had no idea at all.

For the penguin parade, we weren't allowed to photograph the penguins because they were afraid that the camera flash would scare the penguins into confusion and as a result the penguins wouldn't be able to return to their nests.

So we could only satisfy with camwhoring while waiting for the penguins to come back. The staffs came down later and I had to keep my camera.


Do not be fooled by the pictures above, we were freezing our asses off from all the chilly winds blowing from the sea AND we had to endure that for the whole hour before the penguins came up.

My advice: If you ever go for Penguin Parade, bring those mask that terrorists use to protect your face and ear from all the chilly winds. The cold from your face and ear would eventually spread into your body so it's probably best that you minimize the area of your skin being exposed to the wind as much as possible.

That said, there were a few heroic souls who went there with only short sleeve shirts (that's the only layer they're wearing) and short pants. They must be Eskimos.

After the Penguin Parade, we ate pizza in the car and then drove back to Melbourne City and called it a night.