Melbourne - Day 7 and 8

(Day 1 and 2)

(Day 3 and 4)

(Day 5 and 6)

Day 7 – Eureka Tower

When I booked the tour for Great Ocean Road I booked it as a package with the Eureka tower as well, so today I decided to redeem my voucher, instead of doing it tomorrow before my flight as that would probably stress me out. The voucher included the Eureka Skydeck 88 and “The Edge”, where you go into a glass box which is “pushed” 3 meters outside the building, so you look down on the ground approximately 300meters below.

 The lift up to the Skydeck was really quick, 9meters per second! My ears popped. It was strange seeing the numbers of the floors going so quickly! The Skydeck was really good, you could walk around the whole floor, so you got a 360 view of Melbourne.

 I had really been looking forward to doing “The Edge” experience. Not scared of heights at all, I thought it would be really cool to look straight down to the street below, and know that it was only 4cm of glass under my feet. We weren’t allowed our bags or cameras into the box (they want to earn more money by you buying the picture they take of you in there).

 When it started they played some sound effects while they pushed the box out, I don’t know if it was supposed to be cool or scary, but I wasn't really impressed. The glass walls were white and we couldn't really see through them, then suddenly they made them clear. But I was kind of disappointed because I didn't think they were quite clear enough. There was also some glare so I had to move to be able to see properly through the glass floor, which also had steel bars so the parts you could look through wasn't really very big, but I do understand that it’s probably safer, I just think the glass could have been a lot clearer.

 After a while the girl controlling the box started making some of the walls and the floor and roof white again, alternating so that you could look through one of the walls etc but not the others, then she started doing it quicker and quicker so that you didn’t really have time to look through any of the windows. Again, I have no idea why she did that, it was just annoying and I was not impressed at all, neither was one of the other ladies in the box with me judging by her facial expression. The girl made the glass clear again and took pictures of each group in the box. It was only 7 people in the box, including me; a group of 3, a group of 2 and then the lady and I were the single ones. They took 2 pictures, one normal and then they told us to be silly on the other one. After the pictures they moved the box back into the building and we could go out and buy the photos they had taken if we wanted to. I did buy the one they had taken of me, only to kind of have as a memory. The glass is not very clear on the picture, maybe it was the weather or the glare or the flash of the camera, but you can’t really see properly the view. So I took one of myself in front of the normal window on the Skydeck which I think turned out much better.

 I'm glad I didn’t pay for “The Edge” as I personally didn’t think it was worth it. I did enjoy the view from the Skydeck though and that was enough really. Saying that though I would have probably bought a ticket for “The Edge” just because I would have thought it was better than it was, and for the experience. You don’t know until you've tried, right?

Day 8

As my flight left Melbourne really late, around 10pm, I had an extra day in Melbourne in a way.

While I was waiting for Mai at Federation Square I saw some people dressed up as zombies walking around, it was really cool. I wonder why they were doing it. Anybody know?

 When I met up with Mai we went to St. Patricks Cathedral and had a look inside. Like I’ve said before; I’m not a religious person, but I do think that religious buildings are very nice and I like looking at them. St. Patricks Cathedral was no exception; it was beautiful on the inside and the outside.

 After the Cathedral we had a look at harbour town shopping centre down at the docklands, just window-shopping.

One of the guys we met on Friday night had offered to drive me to the airport, which was really nice of him. I actually told him that my flight left at 8pm, a lie, not nice I know, but that way I didn’t have to keep him up late to drive me, and if something happened so that he couldn’t take me after all I had plenty of time to arrange for some other way of getting there. The airport I was going to was Avalon, a fair way out of the city.

H, the guy that was taking me, showed up on time. It took us about an hour to get to the airport, and then I just had to sit and wait… Very boring. The plane was also an hour late because of some bad weather in Brisbane, but the staff got everybody on quickly when it was time for us to board.

As it’s been really cold in Melbourne the last few days I was happy to feel the heat when I landed in Brisbane! Although I will probably think it’s too hot when the daytime heat hits.

I took a taxi (expensive!!) to my hostel, YHA Brisbane City, which I have only booked for the one night. There was someone waiting for me when I arrived as I had warned them that I would be really late, I checked in and went to bed.

“Holiday” over.

I look forward to seeing The Paramedic again.