Superbowl Monday in Australia. The game started at 10am Melbourne time, so I let Gregor watch that while I headed to downtown St. Kilda to take a yoga class. It was an advanced Iyengar yoga, a style I’d never tried before. It involves the use of props (blankets, ropes, blocks) and a lot of terms I had no recognition of. I picked things up pretty quickly, though. I could certainly tell I hadn’t done much yoga of late.
After yoga, I headed back to Amy’s house and had a shower. It was too nice a day to spend watching football, so we had some breakfast and decided to walk into the city.
We walked along St. Kilda road, stopping at the Shrine of Rememberance – a building built in the 1930s to honour Australia’s soldiers. We thought it was closed, but the guidebook was wrong, so from there we visited the Melbourne Art Gallery. There was a Modern British Art exhibit Gregor wanted to see, which was enjoyable, as well as some interesting portrait photography.
We headed next door, to the Art Centre, to check out the musician Nick Cave‘s exhibit. We thought it was going to be some of Nick Cave’s art, but it turned out to be more of a retrospective on Cave himself. I enjoyed it, but Gregor thought it was a tad self-indulgent (which it was).
We met up with Amy for dinner – eating at a chain called Nandos. Mostly chicken, but nothing terriby special. Amy wanted us to see the view from the Rialto towers, so we headed over there next. Caught a 15 minute movie that showed some of the highlights of Melbourne and surrounding area, then took the elavator to the top and took in a 360 view of the city.
Gregor and I had tickets for the Old Melbourne Gaol at 8:30, so we crossed town to the Gaol (they spell Jail wrong here), got there a little early, and wandered around “Little Italy” till 8:20 or so.
The tour guide at the Gaol stayed in character as one of the hangmen of the jail. We were lead through the jail by candlelight, which was pretty unique. The jail is most famous for housing Australian folk hero (and murderer) Ned Kelly. Apparently the building is the most haunted in the state of Victoria, if you believe in that sort of thing.
We walked back across town to the Crown casino when the tour concluded. I spent about $5 in 5 minutes on 5 cent slot machines, and decided I’d call it a day soon after that. The casino was nice, with a huge number of slot machines, mostly all 2 and 5 cent machines. Not sure how 2 cent machines work in a country without pennies, but that’s just one of the mysteries of Australia.
We caught the tram back to Amy’s and attempted (successfully I might add) to go to bed without waking her up.
