Under the imaginary pressure of must visit venues (according to the "Lonely Planet"), I visited Melbourne Zoo on Wednesday. Although the Melbourne Aquarium is much higher on the must-visit-list, I figured the zoo was a good choice to kick things off with Also -according to my logic- the zoo is in the north of Melbourne and, I was staying in a relative northish part of town, so I should check out the things in the north.
The zoo is located within Royal Park, a massive stretch of nature stuff to find within a city. On the map it didn't seem all that big, just a nice stole through the park, to the zoo. Of course, I was wrong... it's really massive. It took me 45 minutes to cross the park and get to the zoo, whilst enjoying the wonderful Australian sun, as there were no trees along the pathway though the park, there was just grass.. everywhere, and a clump of trees in the distance that never got closer.
The zoo was fun though. A pretty big zoo by itself, lots to see. I uploaded several photos I took at the zoo, which you can see if you scroll down. It's not all of the pictures I took, I have several more but, the time I had on the internet PC had run out before I could upload them all. I started writing this earlier this week (on Thursday) and I'm back now (on Saturday) finishing the text and publishing it, so it can actually be seen on the site. I did however leave my hard drive at the hostel and, guess where the rest of the pictures are.
The zoo had a pretty cool reoccuring theme, where they recreated villages and posted 'real' signs of the area from which the animals originated. For example, near the elephants there was an expedition hut with a bunch of 'Danger, elephants' signs, and a big oil drum that said: "Bang on drum to scare elephants away" - hilarious. The drum was in no way close to the real elephant habitat to scare them, don't worry.
One reason I should shoot myself in the foot is missing out on the tiger cubs. They were out to see in the morning and I forgot to take any pictures. I went back later but, they had gone inside (where you can't see) and remained there for the rest of the day. You'll just have to take my word for it... they were adorable. Two (or three, can't remember) of the tiniest tigers I've ever seen.
Randomness moment: The zoo was littered with children in school uniforms. Pretty interesting to see, there were actually several dozen different uniform designs, I guess every school has a different one. Two boys who I ran into between the tigers and the elephants presented me with a question; one of them was holding a toy frog's head on a stick (you know, the one where you squeeze the handle and the mouth opens) and asked me to kiss it. He claimed he'd been walking throughout the zoo, asking random people to kiss his frog but, no one would. Of course, I couldn't possibly refuse something that random.
So yes, this morning I checked in to the backpackers hotel, after staying at the fancy hotel a little longer. There wasn't any room in the backpackers hotel I wanted to stay at till today (Saturday) so, I extended my stay at the fancy hotel by a pinch. Again, yes... not exactly a die-hard way to do things but, you know... I'm hardly an expert at doing this. So, starting today I'm staying at: Greenhouse Backpacker. Quite the difference from the fancy hotel, obviously; where I had a normal hotel room before, I'm sharing a dorm room with 5 other guys now. The difference is of course also reflected in the price, which is much more reasonable for a longer period of time.
I have my current accommodation for 1 week, so up to the 29th. I've already seen the greater majority of the big Melbourne venues so, after this next it might already be time for the next stop along the coast. I'm not very good at occupying myself without a plan, I end up just walking around the town and looking at people. While that is also fun, it's hardly what I'm here for.
In between Wednesday and today (Saturday) I did more than just that, I will be updating on that in the next entry, otherwise this one would become rather long.
As for the videos: I can't edit any videos on a public PC because, it takes too long ( 2-3 hours editing + 2-3 hours processing), and I can't install any decent software on them. So I'm still hunting for a laptop of sorts that I can use for that.
My next entry will contain the remainder of the zoo pictures, as well as some round-and-about-Melbourne ones that I took.
Be sure to revisit the previous entry, as I added 5 pictures there, which I didn't at the time of it's writing. I also updated the entry I did in Singapore, to reflect the final judgement on my failed Penny Arcade joke; note the added image and the updated 3rd paragraph in the entry.
Till next time!