Melbourne

Kai has been traveling again – this time for a total of three weeks! Three weeks is a very long time, so I decided to go and meet him in Melbourne after his work trip to the Gold Coast and before a conference he went to in Melbourne.

We had four really awesome days!

Admittedly it was a bit cold on the first two days, so we spent most of the time doing indoors stuff:

we walked around Docklands and went shopping at Harbour Town Shopping Centre
we went to the movies and saw Looper
we visited the Old Goal (which is the old Melbourne jail and watch house)
we hopped on a historic tram that goes around Melbourne CBD in a circle to get a better overview of the city
we played Glow-in-the-Dark mini golf – I almost beat Kai, the first time in 19 years of regular holiday mini golfing!

Luckily on the following two days the weather was excellent, so we were able to do some more outdoorsy things:

we visited the Immigration Museum (which I really, really liked!)
we took a tram to St Kilda, visited the Community Gardens, walked along the beach and saw penguins
we rented a car to see the RAAF Aviation Museum in Merribee and stopped at Aldi and Ikea along the way
we met Kris and Ross for a pre-conference drink at the hotel where the conference was held.

In summary: we had awesome four days! It felt like a full holiday. We stayed at a posh apartment, did sightseeing and visited museums, we met friends… what more could you possibly want?

Here are some photos:

Kai playing with art in Docklands.

Mug shot at the Old Melbourne Gaol.

Old ship cabin at the Immigration Museum. Each family and their suitcase had to share one bed!

Sign at St Kilda Community Gardens.

At St Kilda Beach.

Penguin in St Kilda. DO NOT FEED THE PENGUINS! I don’t understand why people throw biscuits into their burrows.

Fancy airplanes at the RAAF Aviation Museum.

Yes, I took a photo of a kitchen at Ikea. For inspiration. And to cry some tears over the fact building something like this in NZ will probably cost about 30-50k.