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Wednesday, March 09, 2011
Melbourne... What a City!
(post 1 of 2)
A friend of ours lived in Melbourne for a year or more,
and raved about it. Now I see why.
What an easy, artsy, colorful, fun city.
Our 1st stop... The Park Hyatt.
It was chi-chi and ritzy, and the rooms were very nice.
With the help of Mr. Z, we crashed their employee Xmas party.
It was fun, and strange.
We were really just trying to kill time
til the GG's were announced at 12:30am
(which was 5:30am the PREVIOUS day in LA).
The bar was a ghost town. Don't know why. It was beautiful!
View from Mr. Z's hotel room balcony.
(I bet you can guess who Mr. Z is, if you think about WHY we were in Oz)
1st day... shopping and a bit of site-seeing.
Zoom in. Wow.
I love this photo I took as I was crossing a street.
And the title of the hamburger restaurant ain't bad either.
Who's that handsome man next to the giant green penguin?
Not an optical illusion.. it's really that big! (xmas decor)
We had sunny days and cloudy days with drizzle.
I marveled at the view from our next hotel, The Langham.
A classy old broad of a hotel.
...that spilled into a mall, fronted by a riverwalk full or restaurants. Charming.
I wish I could share why we had to switch hotels. It was kinda funny (and stressful),
and the bi-product of the entourage we were part of.
The Langham was lovely After the press junket, B & I were to begin
our REAL vacation from The Langham.
This hotel has the friendliest, funniest concierge I've ever met.
Melbourne is filled with great art and architecture, great food and things to explore.
And they love to wear black ala Paris or NYC (which I kinda liked).
And they love their tea, apparently.
I loved this shop that gave free flavored ice tea samples ...
but didn't allow photos!
The Playboy of Tram Street
Didn't buy this from the Visitor's Center.
(but I did buy something.... which I'll show you in a future post)
Hand-painted "wellies" that were so expensive my mouth dried up.
A church near Flinders (train) Station.
... they let me take photos! St. Andrew's Cathedral. :)
Amazing floor!
Should we take the train, the tram or a horse-n-buggy?
Flinders Station (the above photo and the 2 below!)
Melbourne has a FREE tram as well, which circles an 8 block rectangle.
It was so easy to get around this city.
Another photo of Melbourne from our hotel room.
On the left side: Flinder and St. Andrews.
We ate at a fancy-schmanntzy restaurant one night,
belonging to a well-known chef.
Walking Melbourne at night...
as spooky as the above photo is, I've never felt more safe in a city at night.
People of EVERY age were out walking and celebrating Christmas.
...and we took in a musical, just for fun (and it was!).
View from our hotel room at The lovely Langham.
Our stay in Melbourne was far too brief.
Yet I have another post full of pictures of her
ready to go once I see that enough people haven't missed this one.
More photos soon!
~Shephard :)
Labels: Australia
posted by Shephard @ 