Melbourne, Australia

Our cool New Zealand days deserted us in Melbourne (Mel-bun). By the time we headed back to the ship, it was 99 degrees and humid.

Our ship’s shore excursion was a Yarra River Cruise and visits to the Shrine of Remembrance and FitzRoy Gardens. We took a bus from the cruise port to our destinations and, again, saw some amazing architecture.

The building above with the yellow “belt”around it is the tallest building in Melbourne and is an apartment building.

The Yarra River splits Melbourne in half, and we spent an hour learning about the River and enjoying the sights. This was our transportation.

The river was bordered by beautiful trees and parks and is well used by locals. We saw a number of bridges and, probably most importantly to Brian, we passed the home of the Australian Open Tennis Tournament and Rod Laver Arena.

A few more bridge pictures.

After the cruise, we headed to the Shrine of Remembrance, which is a memorial that was originally built to honor those people from Australia and New Zealand who fought in and perished during World War I. Additions have been made to include men and women who served in later wars. The Shrine is an incredibly impressive building with displays on the inside and statues on the grounds.

By now, it was getting much hotter. We headed to our last stop, FitzRoy Gardens.

I am amazed by the number of beautiful public gardens in Melbourne. At these gardens, we saw Captain Cook’s Cottage, which is actually his parents home that was transported, brick by brick, from England and finished as it would have been when the cottage was occupied by them. It was very small but nice and cool inside. Those thick walls really work! Again, there was statuary scattered around the park. Here are two we saw, Captain Cook and Diana, the Huntress.

Behind the statue of Diana is the Conservatory. I walked in and it took my breath away! I have never seen so many large and colorful begonias, impatiens, and coleus plants. It was stunning.

When we completed our visit, we hopped back onto our nicely air conditioned bus and headed to the ship. The tour was letting people off, if they wished, to do some shopping before the bus got back to the pier. We decided to get off on Bay Street hoping that we could find a bank that would exchange our New Zealand dollars for Australian Dollars. We were unsuccessful in that quest and were referred to some money exchange companies in the Central Business District. Since we weren’t in that area, we decided to find a money exchange in Sydney in a couple of days. We were able to use an ATM and to get some of the local bank notes.

Our walk back to the ship was quite warm and we stuck to as much shade as we could find. It was only about half a mile, but I was soaked when we got back. I figure the walk was great practice for our visit to Petra where we have to walk 5 kilometers through the desert. I don’t think that trek will be as quite as humid though. We’ll find out in a few weeks.

There was a pioneer in Melbourne, before the British arrived, and there are a number of places named for him. My favorite sign of the day…

We’re in Sydney on Saturday!