2009回顧篇 “三” "Melbourne Trip"

For this Blog, I'm gonna use English typing, because I am just slow in typing Chinese characters. But, in the same time, I feel that it's cool to use bi-languages in my Blog, so yeah, they will be use in alternate, so that I can sharpen my Chinese typing as well.

Well for this today's entry, I am going to review the Melbourne trip on April. 4 days trip to watch the Avalon international airshow and also travelling around Melbourne City and its surrounding ^^

%%%%%%%%%%%%%%    DAY 1    %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%

7:00 am in the morning, Ronald and me reached Avalon airport at Melbourne. Well, it's actually not quite Melbourne because it's situated 40 km from city center. Distance does not seem to really bother us because we have got us our wheels. Here we come..

A Ford Falcon V6

It's not as good as it sounds like. Although it's vast in horsepower. Handling-wise the car is a failure. It just turned around a corner very badly losing its speed dramatically. Although V6 could compensate for that, but still its chassis design certainly wont be able give a good balance to the front power it has. And also the car just look dumb and bulky... not my type :(

Let's see the interior of the car...

Bad..bad..bad.. Just PLASTIC.. and i remember there is something very wrong with one of the air-conditioner panel. Oh yeah, turning on the windscreen heater will actually disable the audio system in the car. What a convenient way to shuffle between air-cond and radio ><

Anyway, my main purpose of going to Melbourne is to watch the international airshow, since I am studying aeronautical engineering. I think it would be cool by just looking at how the aircraft actually maneuvers (gosh i cant get this spelling right for at least 4 times) in the real life. So here we come... Avalon airshow :D..

For the first stop at Melbourne or Victoria State, we have decided to go head for area called Geelong (40 km from Melbourne if I am not mistaken) because we can only check into hotel at 2 p.m. To be honest, Geelong is a pretty boring area, and at there I have noticed that Woolworths is not called Woolworths over there but Freeway or something similar (what a weird name)... Anyway, here is some of the places that we walked around..

This is actually a sea-side public pool somewhere at Geelong. For me, this pool is actually well located to overlook the sea. Although I have been to some better pool (turquoise water and blue sky with oceans). Anyway, let's accept it as my 1st place on Victoria (some sea-side park).. ^^

And.. a guy was actually swimming or prepared to dive early in the morning.. good on him

Mucking around the town, we drove past this black-stone Victorian style church.. And we took some photos of it...

Of course, besides this church, we went to a Westfield mall nearby to eat Wendy's. Right after that, we head west, to the famous twelve apostle on Great Ocean Road.

*** Travelling on a foreign land, of course, we needed some directional guidance to our destination. Hence, we relied on installed Google map in our phone. But we were wrong about it, because, we were diverted to a place that located completely opposite direction to the 12 apostles.****

Here we come to some random beach , again.... *sighh..

In spite of getting to the totally opposite direction, but, our spirit of travelling did not stop us there, and then we asked people for the direction. And.... WTF.. it's gonna take us 4 hours drive from here to there..

All right we say, since we won't have any chance in the near future.. getting there would be worthwhile :)...

So we drive.. heading to Great Ocean Road...

Stopped at a scenic outlook for a break from driving....

A town called Lorne...

Many more sightseeings during the drive..

~Wildlife Encounter~

Final Stopping at Cape Patton Lookout

Finally, after 3 hours drive, we arrived at 12 apostles national parks..

Speaking of 12 apostles, actually is a limestone formation..for more information see here

Sun was too bright, all my shots were over-exposed..

Impressive Cliff

As we are facing the sun =.= We barely could open our eyes.. Especially me.

Time for craziness after long hour of drive..

Ronald is so disgusting, people gonna drink that... ><

%%%%%%%%%%%%%% DAY 2 %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%

Avalon Airshow

Here we come, to the extravagance Avalon Airshow. Pretty sad it was raining upon our arrival. And yeah, I hate wet... cox It will just fu** up everything from my clothes, camera and shots taken. But what could i do, here we begin our visit..

This is the hearing protection in orange colour

Proceeding to the gate and Inside...

Military Aircraft on display (not sure about the model)

Military Tank..

Military Mobile Surveillance Unit

Visitors..

Qantas A380

F35 standoff missile?

Time to see some awesome aircraft takeoff , landing and maneuverer displays...

Waiting for take-off, feel tired =.=

Giant balloon.. quite ugly..

A380 preparing for take off..

F-16 Raptor

~Hercules~

Tiger ARH...

Finally, walking into Expo site..

%%%%%%  DAY 3  %%%%%%

For this day, Melbourne city will be explored briefly as we are new to here. Melbourne is a beautiful city rich of historical buildings and some of its beauty is hidden in the alley way, much like Italian cities.

1st stop is Chinatown due to its proximity to our hostel.

Flinders Street Station

Ronald reading MX

~Southern Cross Station~

ETIHAD Stadium

The National Gallery of Victoria

Melbourne Tram

Ronald - a backpacker wannabe

Dinner at Ferrari Cafe (it's actually called Cafe Correto)

a Ferrari themed cafe

All of them are Italian staple

Finally, a cone of icy cream as dessert..

After a wonderful dinner, we drove around and stopped at Southern Cross Ferris Wheel.. and also Crown Casino

On the Yarra River bank, The Melbourne night skyline can be observed.

==== Day 4 ====

4th day was basically for visiting the city in detail. Even thought we were pretty exhausted, still there was a desire to explore Melbourne city under the sunlight.

Before everything, we checked out from the backpackers hostel.

1st thing we explored was the tram system..

Waiting for the tram to come... Yarra trams

Two chicks on the left hand side looks cool =.=

Studying the city map of Melbourne..

the tram is named as a sign of friendship between Vienna and Melbourne

Ronald is just loving light poles in Melbourne :P

Moving on to Queen Victoria Market. Hopefully there is something interesting stuffs being sold in the place.

Oh yeah, people queued up for this doughnuts..

Looks good..

My turn would be next

DOUGHNUTS~!!!

Actually they taste just all right :(

Finding other delicacies.. we came across to this German Sausage shop...

We bought one pie and one sausage bun.. pie was from the other shop... red wine is part of the ingredient for the pie..

The pie was very yummy =)..

Since Latte is Ronald's favourite, Melbourne's coffee must not be missed.

The cafe is called COFFEA CAFE

 

Actually one of my friend is living at Melbourne, he was a high school friend of mine.. Miah.. Jeremiah Chin. We actually will be meeting in few hours, at the Melbourne Central Mall.. according to him. So hanging around while waiting for him to actually got off his bed would take some time...

Going into Melbourne Central... just in case we have to find the way later..

Walking past the mall, we are heading to city square of Melbourne..

Just wondering does this mean =.=

Typical Melbourne Alleyway..

Historical Buildings around city square

Meeting with Miah for dinner, Jap food in one of the restaurant in Melbourne Central

Pool game at Orange (if i am not mistaken)

Here is the only pic I have on mr Miah.. lol..

Say goodbye to Melbourne T.T

Back in Sydney after an hour flight.. Ronald is very hungry and it's his trademark look to sweat during eating.. because he is just so hungry and the food is hot XD...

Melbourne trip was concluded here. I like Melbourne for it's classical feel, elegant display of historical buildings and decent Italian cuisine. I hope Sydney could learn from Melbourne in terms having good sense in city planning. To be honest Sydney is really becoming an old looking city, heavily depending on its harbour only, a 70s city in 21st century.. really outdated.. :(

I guess it's time to call it an end. Next big blog would be Gold Coast Travel Blog.. Vivian will be the author for it, and I am doing the photography editing. Hopefully she has time to do it or else i need to finish it myself :(..

~ The End~