Wednesday Aug. 14...Visiting

Wednesday was cloudy by the time I left the house at about 11 am (I am getting really lazy .taking my time getting the day started)  When I arrived at Flinders Station, the sun was  shining.   I went around the back down by the river to get the information for an Earthcache about the Yarra River.  Then made my way up to the GPO to meet a friend from high school for coffee at Curt’s Cocao site. 

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 Kathleen went to Tupper with me and  is a professor/researcher at the University of Melbourne. For all my high school friends reading this….she is well and happy and heading off to speak at a conference in Copenhagen for a week and then holidaying in Italy for 5 weeks…..and she says hi to everyone.

Chinatown

After our coffee I chatted with Curt for awhile and then made my way out to find another cache….I found one  in Chinatown  and then bought a bottle of wine to take to my next stop. 

 

Trams

 I caught the tram (I love this city’s transit, buses. trams and trains!)  up Swanston St. then Lygon St to dinner at Trish and Sherryl’s house.  Also invited was Trish’s brother and his wife Elaine.  A delicious lamb dinner with potatoes and veggies and a scrumptious desert….very yummy.  Great dinner and great company. 

A very busy. day

Thursday Aug. 15.….Docklands

Curt was working again today so I went into town about 12:30 (boy I’m getting slow!)  I decided  I was going to take the free Tourist Bus ride around Melbourne and get off in Docklands.  I took this tour bus 2 years ago with Carol….it stops at 13 different tourist spots where you can get off or on….it runs a recorded commentary and a friendly driver that adds little bits and pieces of history and other info…..best of all it is FREE!

I got out at stop 10, at Docklands….5 caches I could choose from…..that is until I read about them….4 of them I needed to pack a kayak, you can only reach them from the water and one is even under the dock!  One I could get but there was about a dozen fisher people surrounding the cache area.  So off I went in search of a cache, my GPS not liking the signals bouncing off of all of the buildings.    I finally found one and then I made my way to the Immigration Museum but by that time it was 4:30 and it closed at 5 so, another day. 

I wandered about for another while and then made my way back “home”

Friday Aug. 16.….Monet’s Giverny Garden revisited

Today Curt and I decided to go to the Monet exhibit at the National Gallery Victoria http://www.ngv.vic.gov.au/ . So I got up early and was downtown by 10:30.

 Carol and I didn’t go to this gallery when we were here  last time…..it is beautiful….a waterfall when you first come in, a large meeting room with a stained glass ceiling, a sculpture garden in the back….

NGV

The exhibit was wonderful  http://www.ngv.vic.gov.au/whats-on/exhibitions/exhibitions/monets-garden….most of the work was painted in his garden in Giverny France, where Sheryl, Paul and I visited last summer.  I truly appreciated the art and the artist as I toured and kept thinking, I was there.  Curt and I arrived at about 11 and didn’t leave til after 2. I couldn’t take pictures in the display but check back to my last year’s blog of pictures of the real garden!

Return to Giverny

Musical waterlies--china bowls floating in the moving pond Beautiful music

We were hungry when we left so we made our way to a Japanese restaurant near Southern Cross railway station…..had a great lunch there then went up to find a cache at the station that I missed yesterday….an easy find today!

Then we continued our walk down Collins Street and ended up at the State Library of Victoria….a building I didn’t go into the last time I was here.  Another beautiful Melbourne building refurbished and well used.

Very busy very quiet

  

 

A Chess Room

Favourite Reading Room

At 6 it was dark and we went across the street to the Melbourne Central Station for me to make my way back home.

As I sit here the wind is blowing very hard and the rain is falling after a beautiful warm sunny day!  I‘m hoping tomorrow and Sunday are nice!

Monday Aug. 11.…Four Seasons in a Day!

The lanes of Melbourne

I sat in the kitchen having my coffee and breakfast Monday morning watching the weather systems roll in, roll over and roll out  of the area…..I woke up to sun, then there was clouds, then rain, then high winds, then sun then clouds, then rain and wind, then sun (I remembered the time we were camping at the top end of the Queen Charlotte Islands where we sat on the beach and watched the weather systems come in and pass over us and leave, replaced by the next one)……so I decided to get on the train and head into town…..if I couldn’t walk and cache….I would go to a museum or an art gallery, there is plenty to do in Melbourne rain or shine.. 

By the time I got to Federation Square it was sun shining and warm!  Someone said there are sometimes four seasons in a day in Melbourne!  I believe them!  I found the cache that eluded me the other day at the information centre! And then headed over to the GPO and had a hot chocolate at Curt’s workplace. 

I left there near 3:00 and started to head up to Lygon street where I was meeting Trish and Sherryl and some of their friends for dinner and a movie.  Lygon Street, “Little Italy,” is a street of shops and restaurants.  I found another couple of caches along the way and arrived at the theatre before the others.  We decided to eat first and choose the movie while we were eating.  We ate at an Italian restaurant across the street…..I had Veal Parmesan…very yummy.    Curt had sent along a delicious  chocolate for each of us for desert.  We saw Behind the Candelabra, the movie about Liberace  http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1291580/ .  I enjoyed it, I haven’t been to a movie in ages.  T & S dropped me off afterwards and invited me to a family dinner on Wednesday……

Lygon Street

 
Tuesday Aug. 12.…Spring is here!

Today was beautiful all day…..I had arranged to meet Jacqueline, caching friend from Vancouver, a former Melbonite  and her son for an afternoon of caching, so I had the whole morning.  When I raised the blind of my bedroom I noticed that there was a large branch lying under the tree on the front boulevard.  I knew they were coming to collect the garbage and the green waste early Wednesday so I got dressed and dragged the branch into the back yard and started to break it up.  I filled the “green waste” and there will be another one filled before I leave…they only pick up every second week.  I also need a handsaw to cut up the main branch.

By 1:30 I was in Flinders Station and my phone rang….Jacqueline was at the zoo and so I headed up to meet them….meeting at an Earthcache.   Got on the train at 2 that should have got me to my destination by 2:17.……at 2:12  in North Melbourne there was an announcement that the train was terminating and we would have to get on a bus…..that led (with the help of a nice women who had been sitting beside me on the train) to a tram ride that took me to the zoo as I got off I could see J. and her son heading to the earth cache site, so I called to her….it was now 2:50!   We found a couple of more caches at the zoo and then got on the tram again that took us to the city.  We cached around the Southbank of the Yarra river and headed to Federation Square.  We parted company about 5:30 as it was getting darker and I headed home for a quiet evening.

Yarra River

The rest of Friday........

….Friday Continued and Beyond

Got on the train about noon at the Regent station and arrived at Flinders Street Station at about 12:20 and as Curt lives right across the street (handy) I was in front of his building by 12:25.  I had a tour of his building and apartment and then we were off….walking the cute narrow lanes lined with shops and cafes and bustling people.

 

Building in a building

Flinders Station

 

 

He took me to the place where he works, the GPO (the General Post Office) http://www.melbournesgpo.com/about/ building that, like many many heritage buildings in Melbourne, have been turned into something else….shops and offices. He works for Cocao  http://www.cacao.com.au/  Many of the beautiful old buildings in Melbourne are called arcades because they have been converted into malls with lots little shops, you can use them to go from one street or lane to another.  Now on some of the old buildings they are leaving the old street facing wall and  putting in new insides.

I tried to find a couple of caches down there but the tall buildings and narrow lanes, just have the GPS signals bouncing all over the place making it hard to settle it down to GZ (plus I think I was embarrassing Curt by poking about benches and things!)

We also went to the ACMI (Australian centre for Moving Image) in Federation Square to see a display by author illustrator, Shaun Tan.  It was about taking his picture book, The Lost Thing, from book to animated feature www.acmi.net.au/shauntan.  We didn’t stay to see the feature, but I will come back next week to do that.

We met up with Natasha after her classes , she took us on a tour of her classrooms at RMIT http://www.rmit.edu.au/ where she is studying art and design.  Then went out to dinner to a very busy Korean restaurant…..very yummy.

They walked me back to the train station to catch the train home.  It was busy as one of the soccer/footie games had just let out.  As I was sitting waiting a young man with headphones on started dancing….not singing , not asking for anything….just dancing.  He got on the same train as I,  in the car behind.  But he kept right on dancing……he kept the people smiling and even a couple of people joined in…….he was still dancing when I got off at Regent station 20 minutes later!!!!!

 

Saturday Aug. 10.

Saturday was sunny when I finally got out of bed…..I’m reading The Cuckoo’s Calling by Robert Galbraith aka JK Rowling so it kept me in bed longer than usual.  In the afternoon I went exploring “my” neighbourhood……I’m trying to get used to the cars driving on the “wrong” side of the road and as a pedestrian trying to look right then left before I step off the curb and not get myself killed!!!  I walked up to Edwardes Lake Park for a couple of caches.  Then walked by through the little community of Reservoir where the shops are.  I don’t know why they think this is still winter there are so many flowers blooming everwhere already.

Curt and Natasha came later in the afternoon armed with more veggies to cook me a delicious dinner of veggies and chicken, spiced with a mild curry  served over rice.  We spent the evening chatting and watching my pictures of my trips from 2012.…..they were very patient  watching them  all of them….they didn’t fall asleep anyway! 

Sunday Aug.11

They did  spend the night  and Curt cooked a late brunch for Natasha and I…..I really like this making up for all the Birthdays and Mother’s Days that he has missed….I like to be catered to!

After cleaning up we took the car out for the first time.  This time Natasha driving and I sat behind in the passenger seat, again trying to get the feel of driving on the left side of the road and mimicking the shifting of the gears and using the clutch as she drove (wonderfully by the way).  (For those who don’t know I have never learned to drive a manual car….big mistake being lazy like that…so I have taken 4 driving lessons Shifting Gears Driving School http://www.defensivedrivingschool.ca/   (with a manual car.  It seems most of the rest of the world uses manual cars. Last year I couldn’t use the cars at the exchanges in Germany and France because I couldn’t drive them!!!)  I will practise around the block later  this week !

We drove up to CERES  http://www.ceres.org.au/home.html at Energy Park…it has a community garden, a nursery, a market, community bike shop, café and playground….oh and a cache!   After that we went to Fitzroy and had a bite to eat and a little walk to see the shops.  We got back to the house and chatted for a bit and then Curt and Natasha hopped the train back to town.  

 

 

July 7-July 9----I've arrived

Sheryl dropped me off at the airport on Wednesday at 3:45 and by 4:30 I had my boarding pass, unloaded my luggage (had to pay for the 2nd one...Quantas lets you take 2 but United, the starter airline, doesn't....so I had to pay!), went through security, then customs and was sitting in the boarding! No long lines no long waits, but a long wait for the 6:30 flight!  Met a nice couple with 3 little girls who were returning to Lima.  

Collections at YVR

Flight to LA good.....then got to LA and had to hoof it to the Tom Bradley Terminal from terminal 7...got boarding pass but then the line to get through security...a half hour.....after that I had to find garte 130 ( I wish I had a pedometer, it must have been about 1km)....I just sat down and they started boarding (11:00pm)!  What a crazy airport, now I know why I have tried to avoid it ....people everywhere.

The flight was great.  Nearly 15 hours....time for eating (wonderful food) and a glass of wine, sleeping (I actually must have slept about 4 hours total...really slept not dozed like I usually do.) watched one movie, read, chatted with the lady next to me (who was a cacher!!!) , watched the flight map (I am a map geek!) .  The time went fast.  As we neared Melbourne we discovered the Skycam!  a camera that is attached to the top of the plane.  We watched the sunrise and the landing of the plane....very cool!  We landed in Melbourne 8am Thurs Aug. 8....we lost a day along the way.

I was met by Trish and Sherryl , sister of my home exchange lady and her partner.  It was  wonderful to be met by friendly faces and taken to my home for the next month.  Joan's home is great....a cute little Australian bungalow....3 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms a living room, a study and a large eat in kitchen with lots of windows facing out to a beautiful backyard.  (pictures will be added tomorrow)  After I was shown all the ins and outs of the house, they left and Curtis arrived about 15 minutes later.

It was a beautiful sunny day in Melbourne.....not as warm (11C) as I left behind in Vancouver but a Vancouver spring time  day.  Curt and I walked down to the Preston market about a kilometer away and bought some groceries and came "home"...oh and  found a cache (it's the 7th in Vancouver). 

Since it is winter in the southern hemisphere the days are shorter....the sun goes down about 5:30pm.  My goal was to stay up until near my usual bedtime.....Curt left about 9 after he cooked me a delicious dinner of the supplies we got today, lamb chops, sweet potatoes and broccoli....oh and for desert macarons from the store he works at Cocoa!  I was in bed with the lights out at 10:00....exhausted....I lost track of the time I was awake since I left home!.

Friday, I woke up to wind and rain....about 10C.  But by the time I showered, dressed, got the kitchen and my luggage sorted out the rain had stopped.  

I phoned Curt and made my first trip on the train using the Mykey card (a transit card you load  with money and use it to check in at the station and then when you get off the train you have to check out)   The card is supposed to give you the best deal for a day's travell...hoping it has.

Friday to be continued tomorrow........