Day 7 - Kings and Queens

I think I mentioned before that the Aussie's take off both Good Friday and the Monday after Easter as holidays every year. Well, Day 7 was Good Friday. Being a good ol' American boy who doesn't know how to stop working, (I know there might be some debate on this issue and the level of sarcasm you think I have while writing it) I actually did work on Friday. Actually, I was not alone. My fellow consultant, who decided not to take part in the Thursday festivities of software training, and I met in the morning to discuss the operating status of the System as installed for this utility and more importantly, the direction we wanted to go with the government trials. This actually took us several hours of true legitimate work time.

While we were having our meeting, which happened to be in my hotel room since I have a table and with his moving out of his apartment, he doesn't, the cleaning lady knocked on the door. This was the first of four consecutive days in which she, with her thick Ukrainian (I think) accent, knocked on the door while I was either working, typing these posts, or otherwise taking advantage of the weekend by starting off my day extremely leisurely. I would say that I had been sleeping late, but I wasn't.

I could understand the cleaning lady's accent perfectly, but she noticeably could understand almost as many as one in twenty words through my accent. Finally, while Brian was going through some documents, the cleaning lady and I managed to understand each other enough for her to understand that I wanted a 'Do Not Disturb' tag for my door. She walked away and came back quickly with a tag. I hung it and shut the door so that we could finish with our work. Somehow, later on in the long weekend the tag disappeared from my door. I am not sure what was going on.

Eventually around 3:00PM, having not yet eaten, I was in a position to take advantage of the day and see some sights. I had earlier determined that this would be a good day for a walk around Melbourne to see some of the gardens, including the Royal Botanic Garden. The Garden is elegantly situated south of the Yarra river in a park known as Kings Domain. Across the street from Kings Domain is the Queen Victoria Garden. Now, sadly, I found out later by flipping through my tourist guide book that I missed a couple of key sights at the gardens. I may or may not make it back to tie off the loose ends, we'll just have to see.

In the Queen Victoria Garden is a nice monument in her honor (I think this and the other pictures for this post do a very nice job of depicting the wonderful weather we have been having here)...



The inscription on the monument is this:
"Erected by the People of Victoria
In Honor Of
Her Most Gracious Majesty
QUEEN VICTORIA
She Wrought Her People Lasting Good"

From the QVG (they don't call it that here, but I am lazy) I walked further from the city, and across one street, to Kings Domain, which is a substantially larger park. Being right next to each other they are basically the same park.

Fair Warning, there are going to be a lot of photos in this post of the gardens because I think they are beautiful, or otherwise entertaining photos, and if nothing else, I have a lot of them to share, for example, the old guy on the bench (I did not go to say hi, I am not that weird)...



While walking around, I found my way to the Lynch Gate to the Botanic Gardens...


...and past some 'flowering' cacti...


...and near some neat trees...


...and adjacent to some bamboo...


...and eventually down to the Ornamental Lake...


...from there to the Arid Garden...


As the sun began to set I had to find my way back out of the gardens and domains...


...and back to the city. On my way I found dinner, a chicken on foccacia bread sandwich, and some street performers. The street performers consisted of a guy dressed as a stereotype of a Brit with big buck teeth and a full Windsor knot on his tie and a girl dressed in all black. He did some juggling routines and she was a contortionist, able to get both feet behind her head and then stand on her hands.

Beyond the performers, I found my way to the front of the Crown Casino (the largest casino in all of Australia). I did not go in, but I did stay to see some of the 'light' show. The lights in this case all came from huge gas powered flame-emitting burners...



And that concluded my day.