Leah Travels: Melbourne Part 1 (May 20-26)

Weeeeeell after the Semi-Permanent after party I didn't get to bed until about 2am. Our plane was to leave at 6:30am...which meant we had to check in by 5am...which meant we had to get in a taxi by 4:30am, which meant I had to wake up by 4am. I set about 4 different alarms because I was NOT going to miss this plane.

Here we are at the Auckland airport....It is maybe 5:45am. We are crabby and running on 2 hours of sleep. And also hungover. If you survive going through the airport and an international flight while hungover, then you're basically a pro at flying.

The flight to Melbourne wasn't bad, only 3 hours long. I couldn't sleep at all. I was too excited about the conferences. I needed to get all of my new ideas down on paper. Waiting in the customs line wasn't that fun though. It was hot, and we were surrounded by all these people, and this baby was crying....uggghhh.

Took a taxi into the city. Found our backpackers (Urban Central...decent place, I recommend them!). We decided to go out and grab some lunch as we had time to kill before check-in. We walked passed the Crown Casino and asked the doorman where a good place to eat would be. He directed us toward the food court. So we got to walk through the casino to get there! Was kind of fun.

My lunch, Caesar Salad $12 AUD.

Dessert, Tiramisu...basically a white cake with coffee flavoring $8 AUD.

After lunch we killed some time at the backpackers until Christina arrived. Chatted with her a bit, had dinner, and then went off to see the Eureka Sky Tower to see the whole city light up at night. It was beautiful! I even got some photos to turn out!

City of Melbourne at night

View of the harbor/docks

Railway Station at night

Then I started having fun with boca effects and light painting. These ones kind of turned out:

On the way back to the backpackers we walked along the river. All of the trees and statues were lit up, sooo pretty!

looking over the river at the city

Stopped at McDonald's for some ice cream, I thought it was cute that there is a burger named after Sydney.

Then we passed a gelato place and thought, "oh no! Should have gotten ice cream here!"

Crown Casino at night.

Melbourne Convention/Exhibition Centre where agIdeas would be held.

Australian money! It was hard getting used to the coins they are much different from NZ coins. Like the $2 one is smaller than the $1 one. And they have 5 cent coins too.

Finally got back to our room and got ready for bed. I wrote a blog entry. And then slept really well that night because I was so tired.

Monday. Christina took us out on the town on a quest to find a live Banksy. Couldn't find it. Asked the locals for directions, but everyone had directions to a different place. Actually it had been destroyed only a week before. So sad! And I guess other works that Banksy has done there have also been destroyed. See this link. But we had fun looking at graffiti anyway, there was lots of it! Then shopping at DFO for souvenirs and girl things. Meanwhile as we walked through the city I worked on my dancing video for Graphic Design 3. Will post it on here once its finished (due Thursday!) So that was fun.

Tuesday we took the tram to Harbour Town and did some more shopping. Also, glow-golf (mini-golf with black-lights!) and then lunch at the Pancake Palour. By this time I was my regular crabby-bad-attitude-tired-not-fun-to-be-around-self. And I just wanted to be alone. So I took a trip to the post office by myself to mail a package and just be alone for a little bit. Which was nice.