I'll be honest. I had meant to close yesterdays blog with some final thoughts on New Zealand... so i'll just toss those out now. First and foremost, it has got to be the most beautiful country I have ever seen! The ability for the landscape to change from smooth beeches and rugged coastlines to rolling hills into sharp peaks. In some cases we even skip the hills and fields and go straight from beech to mountains. Some mountains and hills are lush displays of hundreds of greens, while others are barren rock peaks capped by snow. To me the beauty and diversity of the landscapes was the best part.
Secondly, everyone is so friendly. Even when things got messed up... it was impossible for me to be mad about it. For example... we'd originally booked a full day hike on the Franz Josef glacier, but got mixed into the half day. And the group went practically out of their way to offer a refund. When I brought this up I was unable to not say that I still had a great time over and over again.
Lastly, the sheer variety of activities to do is overwhelming. When visiting Bruce he said it would be easy to spend 6 to 8 weeks on New Zealand alone. While I was skeptic at first... now i'm a believer. On that note if anyone is ever going and would like tips i'm happy to oblige.
Ok, moving on... today I woke up at 3:25 am to catch a shuttle to the airport. I will now note that that is a lame and not fun time of day. Time of day aside, the shuttle to the airport was smooth and checkin was easy. We debated getting coffee and breakfast but realized when when arrived in Melbourne it would still be before 9, so we might want breakfast then. So we waited and boarded and the flight went swimmingly. We arrived in Australia at 8:30, and were ready to enjoy a new country.
With the aid of some tips Martha (my friend from Kenyon whom I'm visiting here) gave me, we boarded a bus and headed into the main city, where we caught the tram to our hostel. We dropped our bags and began to explore to find some breakfast. We found a nice cafe and had a nice bite to eat. We were now approaching noon, and were both a bit tired to we opted for something easy to do.
Across the street from where we were staying is the Melbourne Museum and it had an imax theater as well. We spent most of the day in the museum and then took a load off our feet to watch Tron Legacy in 3D on imax. Just to get this out of the way... I feel a bit guilty about going to a movie but my excuse is it was advertised as I believe the 3rd largest tv screen in the world. Anyway... the movie was fun and now back to the museum...
The museum isn't huge, and had 5 distinct rooms. We started in the center, the Forest Gallery. There... it was actually local trees and wildlife in an open room (mesh ceiling only). We saw many trees and many pretty bird. My favorite looked like a chickadee, but instead of while it had bright blue. I don't recall its name. :( there were also tunnels to explore under the few steams they had running threw. Afterwards we proceeded through the body and mind exhibit and the science and life exhibit. They were, ugh like you'd expect. The first explores the progression of discoveries about the mind and body and tools and experiments related to the two. The latter was a display of dinosaur and prehistoric animal fossils, as well as gems and semiprecious stones. The coolest thing in this exhibit was a map of Melbourne, done by projection... where it was like a touch screen but based on light sensing rather than touch sensing. It was really cool.
The two unique galleries were about the aboriginal culture and the city of Melbourne. In a nutshell we found that not a whole lot is known about the aboriginals. There were some notes on pretty hideous attempts for integration, and displays of collected tools and weapons and clothes, but seemingly not a whole lot to tie everything together. The Melbourne gallery showed anythings, including some of their first movies, a scale model of a huge cruiser, a comparison of 2 early houses, one wealthy and a poor one. They also had a small portion of this room dedicated to a locally raised race horse from the early nineties. Its name is unfortunately escaping me. It was Phar Lap [Original text here: "Ph.. ... (if you replace each . with a letter) i'll try to edit this with the name later."]
After the museum and movie we had indian food for dinner and headed back to the hostel. More to come on the 'morrow!
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