Tour Diary: Day 3- 23/12/2010

After a good sleep, our third day saw us head to the Queen Victoria Markets for a spot of tourist shopping. When we finally managed to get there, after catching a series of wrong trams and going halfway around the city centre, I split up from my folks to delve into the markets. The markets a really a large series of stalls, running in parallel columns seemingly forever. There were only so many things they could sell though, so many of them had several identical twins. Sometimes you wondered if you had doubled back on yourself! 

Just One Of Many!

Common items for sale included shoes, belts, opals, everything fake you could possibly want, tourist t-shirts and lots of native-themed merchandise. I found one cool shop with lots of fake sport shirts; I couldn’t resist the opportunity to pick up a Zidane shirt, for headbutting other people in! I’d meant to get one in Europe 4 years ago but never did, so I finally had my wish! I also picked up a nice belt to go with my new shorts. One stall had a great variety of funny shirts- some of them rather rude- but I resisted the temptation at the time. 

After checking out all the stalls, I headed away from the markets in search of the nearby cricket store. However, I soon realised I didn’t have a map and didn’t really have any idea where I was going! I gave up and jumped on board the tourist shuttle bus- a mistake. It took me on quite a roundabout journey, all the way out to Docklands, but I wasn’t in any real hurry anyway. After stopping off at the hotel, I went in search of an internet café, in a bid to keep in touch with the goings on in the world. Before I knew it, I was back on Facebook typing and clicking away. Luckily the looming threat of paying for usage kept me from lingering! I then fulfilled my requirement of going to a McDonald’s in every country I visit. It was a funny time to go too, because local man Shane Warne was plastered everywhere. On the way back to the hotel, I found a shop with a big sale on business shirts and eventually bought a nice blue one. 

D R James

That afternoon my parents and I went to meet Roy Kelly, the former headmaster of King’s. We had arranged a time to see him and caught the tram to his amazingly nice house at Melbourne Grammar. He was always a wonderful headmaster and nothing about him had changed. It was a real pleasure to see him again and find out about life since he had left. As always he was kind, generous and very friendly. When he offered us a guided tour of the school, we couldn’t refuse. The campus is amazing, the facilities are excellent, it truly was a wonderful place to go. I think he enjoyed showing it off as much as we enjoyed seeing it! We also managed to find the name of my  grandfather's best friend, who was killed in World War Two, on their memorial wall.

When finally we had explored every corner of the school, we went on our way, still in awe of the beautiful place. That evening we went out to Docklands to find a place for dinner, as well as scouting out the place where we had booked lunch for Christmas Day. Quite fortunately, we found a wonderful steakhouse with the most exquisite food! You could get five different types of steak, four different cuts of each, cooked five different ways and with four different sauces. It was to die for! 

Sunset Over Melbourne

After that great dinner, we headed up the Eureka Tower for sunset. The tower is the tallest building in Melbourne, with 88 floors. Unfortunately the day had just started to cloud over and the scene wasn’t as picturesque as we had hoped. However, the city did look beautiful when it lit up. AAMI park even had green and red Christmas lights on! Soon it was back down the lift (which was exceedingly quick!) and back to the hotel for bed.

 

A Very Christmassy AAMI Park On The Right!