Monday, June 14, 2010

Melbourne - Part IV

On Sunday I began by heading to the Queen Victoria market, which is a commercial hub of the city dating back over 125 years and serving over 200,000 shoppers a week. Normally, I’m not really interested in places like this, but I figured that I should at least check it out and ended up really enjoying it.

In addition to its many stalls where people were selling pretty much everything you can think of, the market was basically a hub of activity with countless performers and random things going on in the vicinity (almost like some sort of fair). My favorite part was a group of street performers who were also playing some traditional South American music (apparently it's big in Australia).

For the balance of the afternoon I simply walked around the city and re-visited some of the sights that I had rushed through the day before. My picture-taking got scaled back considerably as a result and I instead just took things in at a relaxed pace. Nonetheless, here are some shots that I took along the river…









By sunset my legs were getting a bit tired so I found a comfortable bench along the bank of the Yarra for a break. At this point I was basically just killing time since I had a couple of hours before I needed to leave for the airport. It was nonetheless nice to people watch and just look at the Melbourne skyline.

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As a parting thought, I really enjoyed my first visit to Australia and definitely need to plan a return trip in the future. In addition to seeing some of the other cities (most notably, Sydney), I’d like to come back to Melbourne in order to do a drive up the Great Ocean Road. From the pictures that I’ve seen and the stories that I’ve heard, it’s an incredible experience and you need at least a couple of days to do it properly.

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