The trip to, and through, and from both of today’s airports went great.

However…the hostel I chose is a dump. Oh, man, how hard I want to check out and go someplace else.

I’m not gonna, tho. I’m settled in and what the hell, it’s only for 3 days. There’s tea and coffee and the shower is hot.

Adelaide is a lot like Portland. The downtown area is smaller, and a free bus makes sightseeing effortless. The people are pretty friendly too.

Today I saw a Japanese garden, an aboriginal art gallery, the beach, a church, found a thrift shop, the parliament building, and I took a long walk.

Tomorrow I’ll take it easier.

So, earlier, when I was all excited about free pancakes, I didn’t realize something rather major. Pancakes once in a while are a treat; pancakes every day are awful.

After a lovely breakfast of not pancakes, I just walked around today with no agenda. After a bit of tram riding, I found a nice park with a bunch of Japanese tourists milling around. They must know something, I thought, and followed them to some neat stuff. It continued to be sunny, so I wandered around the park. There was a model village and conservatory, some fountains and such.

I managed to find more free stuff to do as well. A couple of galleries of aboriginal art were within walking distance. You might not believe how much money they were asking for that stuff. A lot, is all I know. The best was the state library. Man, it’s great! Such a neat exhibit of all their most famous and old books. Since the region was the capitol, they got some doozies here. I won’t bore you, but they got stuff as good as the Morgan library in NYC, and that’s saying something. Also Ned Kelly’s armor was there. He’s a famous bank robber and murderer. Very popular for some reason.

I finally got out to the docklands on the tram.

It’s an area for the rich and boring. One apartment building I saw went for 10,000 a month. Nice, tho.

Dinner was Japanese. Pretty good and filling for 10 bucks. That’s a good deal in Melbourne.

On to Adelaide tomorrow. I have no idea what there is to do there.

🤩

Today was the day I tried not to spend any of my budgeted money because I bought expensive insoles. Argh. Darn my feet, anyway.

Mission accomplished. Yesterday I skipped a museum so at least I had coffee money, and leftovers for dinner. Luckily, all my daily activities didn’t cost anything but footsteps.

The country’s capitol was here in Melbourne for a few years so they have a very nice capitol building to show for it. The guide was lucky to have a small group, and we got lots of extra time in the rooms too.

It is great to see a parliament building that has never been bombed, or burned, or torn down in a revolution. All original finishes and woodwork.

After lunch, the treasury. Gold was discovered here just after the area was granted independence from New South Wales. Very convenient timing. Melbourne the city grew like crazy. The area under settlement went from a European population of zero to 5 million in less than 200 years. That’s nuts! The building itself is partly now a museum.

Of course I went in some churches too.

Its chilly here now, so again I went home early to watch a move before dinner. Now I’m hooked on Peaky Blinders, thanks a lot Netflix.

After dinner I roamed around the Japanese dollar store. So much crap, and so much more awesome than the dollar store junk we have at home. Not really, but it’s cuter.

Good night, beautiful people

After a generally shitty night, we were all blessed with the dulcet tones of a bullhorn at 530 this morning, announcing all kinds of unimportant crap about a road race. Whose starting line was directly outside our window. Arrrrrrgh.

That’s what you get for staying across from the main train station, I guess.

Anyhoo, since I was up now and love runners, I went out to watch the race and get a walk in. Also, that much activity gets me second breakfast. Wheeee!

At ten, I found the art gallery buzzing. There’s a MOMA traveling exhibit that the locals are mobbing. This leaves the rest of the permanent display for mostly me. It’s a nice place for a city of 5 million, not too big.

It was supposed to rain today, but after some lunch it was still so sunny that I walked to the Victoria market.

It’s a super popular day market, with produce, food stalls, and the most dissatisfying collection of Made In China garbage. What a bunch of junk.

Thank God for donuts. They swooped in to save my afternoon…and then ruin my night with the resulting heartburn. Because when you buy a bag of 5 donuts, you eat a bag of 5 donuts😑😑😑😑.

I’ll never learn. Good donuts tho.

After a savage, sudden rain shower…….another museum!!

Surprised?

This one, ACMI, was darn neat. It shows the history of moving images from the very beginning. Lots of neat displays about movies, TV, video games, you name it. There were virtual reality units showing movies, this was new for me to be able to watch. VR makes me queasy, and with those freaking donuts on board it was rough going. I persevered.

Now it’s only 4 but I am tired so I called it a day.

The hostel has a great TV room with beanbags and Netflix. It goes like this; somebody picks a movie and everybody has to kinda agree. Only, nobody WANTS to pick. So if you just pick something, nobody really complains if it’s bad. Sooooo….its been so much fun putting on bad movies and making everyone watch with me. I’ll pick something awful, wait 5 minutes and leave. Everyone left just sits and watches it because its easier than changing the movie. Also, I kinda hide the remote.

I’ve made everyone watch The Fifth Element 4 times now lolololololololololol.

However, today nobody let me pick. I very pointedly wasn’t given the remote. Somebody else picked Inception. What a trippy and great movie.

The bar downstairs had a open mic night. Kinda awful, but I couldn’t complain. A roommate performed 3 songs she’d written herself. Neat!

Finally, finally its bedtime. I’m so excited to sleep.

Yay!!