Best. Place. Ever. - 1-26-12 - 1-29-12

Ride out of Queenstown to Bungee Jumping and Jet Boating

Digressing into our days spent free in Queenstown is both reminiscent and difficult having just enjoyed some stale pizza atop my rental car’s roof, taking in an Uluru at sunset: one of the most well-known – and possibly only – sights to be seen in central Australia, straying far from any sort of city.  That recount will be for another day, as I must stay true to chronology.  Queenstown: I don’t think I could have dreamed up a more perfect town for myself if I had all the time in the world.  Imagine a blend of Telluride,  Aspen and farm country all rolled into one backpacker – and subsequently young person – infested package that boasts the title of extreme sports capital of the southern hemisphere.  I have never felt more instantly content than I did as soon as we landed in this small town, large village.  

Plane and Caitlyn's head shot.

As soon as we stepped foot off the airplane we were welcomed with jutting, rugged mountains coming out of nowhere, ending an expansive plain of tall waving grass: our personified welcome party.  I typically mock the stereotypical group of people – that shall remain unnamed so as to not offend my Asian readers - that step off the plane to immediately snap 10 or so shots of the plane on the tarmac; a memory and image to last a lifetime.  This particular airport, however, we all found ourselves shoulder to shoulder with these photographically armed to the teeth tourists snapping pictures of our chariot with the extreme scenery as a backdrop.  Improvised writing side note – a rat just ran under my bar stool in the outdoor bar of Ayers Rock resort – of which I am somewhat of a squatter…sleeping in my Suzuki Intimidation, or something like that.  I digress, until he attempts to scale my stool – at which point this post is going nowhere but to the story of a rat in a bar.  Anyway, the landscape of Queenstown is absolutely spectacular and reminded me greatly of Interlaken or Lauterbrunnen, Switzerland; two of my favorite cities I had ever been to.  We were all stoked as we loaded into our shuttle to check into the aptly named Adventure Backpackers Hostel.

Nomin on a Furgburger

Seriously impressed by my whole experience at ABH.  Owned by an Aussie dude from somewhere on the east coast – who had done quite a bit of his own travelling and hostel bunking – it was a 50 bed small joint right in the middle of town who had awesome service and great clean rooms.  Definitely one of the better places we stayed on the trip – although I could have been homeless in this town, for all I cared.  We had the whole afternoon to jump into something, so we headed off to debate over a Fergburger – the best and most famous burger joint in New Zealand, rightfully so.  I attempted to recruit and convince everyone to go on a Jetboating ride – a “must do” in Queenstown, supposedly.  Alas, after much deliberation only 3 of us ended up committing as the others fortunately found a pretty fun luge type course on the top of the gondola just out of town.  (The mouse is back, but I’m fighting to maintain my focus).  

We were recommended one of the smaller, family owned jet boating guides for the optimal canyon time on the boat and for the spectacular drive out on the old gold road that took some 6 years to build through the mountains and into the canyon.  The drive alone made it worth it as we winded along mountainside roads barely wide enough for our van, and subsequently coming what appeared to be perilously close to the edge which made for a fun ride down.  

Shot of the Shotover River and the road along the ridge.

The jet boat operation consisted of a couple tractors, a couple boats, and a moveable dock – all of which were painted bright blue and scratched down to the metal, a sign of what was to come, I’m sure.  We suited up with our very unassuming companions of eclectic decent, fairing from Taiwan, Spain, Slovakia or Japan, and I bolted for the dock to stake my claim in the front to get some solid GoPro footage of an intense ride up and down the canyon.

El Capitan pointing out Liv Tyler's scene location

These guys are absolutely nuts and the boats are some of the most impressive pieces of machinery I have ever been in, so obviously I asked how much one of the bad boys costs.  Apparently they run anywhere between 10 and 100 grand, and I promised our driver a permanent position as my personal jet boat driver as soon as I got my hands on one, to which he replied that he doubted that he had enough experience – comforting kiwi humor.  I had been chomping at the bits to see some Lord of the Rings film locations, being a nerd as it may be, and along the section of river we shot down there was a scene filmed from the first film when Liv Tyler was at the edge of the water with those mean black wraith guys chasing after her.  Pretty cool to see it first hand – illustrates the impressive landscape sweeping the country.

World's First bungee and 90 meters shorter than the one we are doing the next morning, the Nevis.

Up top world's first Bungee Jump

After the ride we stopped by the original location of the first ever commercial bungee jump which was some 100 feet shorter than the one we were slated to do the next morning at ten, and we were subsequently treated with a bit or premature butterflies – which is always a good thing, I guess.  Just makes it all the better when the time comes to take the jump.  After our ride back into town we were met with a storm coming into town so we hunkered down in one of the local watering holes, Cowboys.  This place was ridiculously clad with boots, buckles, hats and dead animals everywhere, topped off with saddle bar stools.  Absolutely incredible, so we knocked back a few, shot some pool and attempted to psych – or spook – ourselves for the impending jump the next morning.  The rain drove the majority of our group to bed, but Matt and I persevered, as it was Australia day, after all and although we weren’t even in Australia, we were intent on celebrating either way.  It was, after the fact, a big mistake, but worth the stories made.  The next morning we nervously scarfed down our last breakfast, and a few stopped by the package store to purchase some courage – something it seemed the majority of us were lacking.  The buildup is always the most intense and dramatic part of the jump, and it was a blast to experience in a big group like this.

We had a 20 minute ride out to the valley to give us time to scare the hell out of one another and in general act like mindless fools to try and forget about the 134 meter plunge that lay ahead (the same height as the Sydney Harbor Bridge, it turns out).  Suited up, rode the gondola out to the whatchyamacallit, and everything then really started to get crazy.  This bungee was much better coordinated and organized than the other one I have done, in which they rented out the gondola and brought their own equipment to sort of rig up – a practice that now seems a bit sketchy, for lack of a better work.  Either way, this one was a ton of fun because everyone was right there in the giant gondola thing with you, when you were jumping, screaming obscenities and warnings at you to not jump or that you better not not jump or whatever.  If anyone had doubts now, they were to be forcefully and deliberately pushed aside when they stepped up to the plate with so many eyes on them – many of whom had already taken the jump, no matter the onslaught of explicatives that made their way out when the time came to waddle up to the platform.

Video of mine will do just fine.  Absolutely incredible:

Adrenaline pumping lunatics then took over our previously apprehensive selves as we reveled in our “adventurous” side.  Definitely going to be celebrating hard tonight on the pub crawl we signed up for, that’s for sure.  After a walk around the incredible park what jutted out into the lake, we stopped for a celebratory beer at a café on the water and relived our jump, over and over.  I will have to continue on with the pub crawl, drive to Christchurch and Christchurch exploration later.  The bar is heating up, to my unfortunate demise as I have an early morning slated for tomorrow to meet the sunset on Uluru.  Right on.

Awkward delayed continuation of Queenstown blog, in keeping it brief as I am about to get on my plane back to the states – bittersweet for sure.  The night after our bungee jumping tour and messing around outside all day, we went on an ice bar pub crawl in true kiwi form.  We met a ton of cool people from all over all along the way, and although we had been to most of the bars the night before, the ice bar was a treat in and of itself, I guess.  The concept of an ice bar is way cooler than the actual experience itself, no pun intended.  After strapping up our ridiculous fur-hooded jackets, having a couple drinks out of their ice cups, and breaking as much of them as we could before a scolding from the pub crawl leaders, we pretty much were over the allure of the ice bar in roughly 10 minutes.  And there was no bathroom as I don’t believe an ice urinal would hold up well to a bar full of full bellied, or bladder, imbibers.  All in all, it was an awesome night and we saw all of the small town that was worth seeing, as night life goes, anyway.  Wearily went to bed a bit too late as we had a skydive planned the next morning for 7:00.  It’s gonna be an early one.

We were all set for the skydive, signed my life over to them, watched the briefing video over and again to mentally prepare, all the while waiting on the bus to come and take us to the jumpzone where we would fall from 15,000 feet and free fall for roughly a minute.  All this, I hear is a rather peaceful and relaxed experience after bungy jumping, but I am not all too sure about that yet, as right when we were hoping the bud was to arrive the administration lady that I signed my life – and a hefty chunk of my wallet – over to crushed all dreams of flying for us.  Unfortunately there were some intense high altitude winds that could seriously ruin a novice diver’s first jump, so although disappointed, we were grateful to them to save us from the risk in general.  Third time a planned dive has been thwarted for me.  One of these days, I suppose.

However adrenaline jacked and subsequently let down I had been led to a dreary demise for me on the bus ride to Christchurch – a 7 hour ride through some of South Islands most spectacular terrain, and least populated regions.  The first several hours was absolutely spectacular as we were crammed into an 11 person van, all 11 of us with a nice cozy little seat.  We took in lakes, valleys, peaks, fields, snow capped mountains, small towns, smaller villages, and about a billion or two sheep.  Words can’t describe and neither can pictures do it justice.  I can confidently say I will be making my way down to these parts in the future again at some point.  I fought to stay awake for much of the ride as I did not initially let my body realize how little sleep I had gotten the night before, what with the excitement of imminent airplane ejection, but as soon as that wore off, so did my conscious.  I, unlike many of the others, had no trouble snoozing away in the airport all that night to wait on our 6:00 am flight back to Auckland to catch our flight back to Sydney.  Ya, it was one of those sort of travel days.

I digress back to our time in Christchurch.  We got dropped off as close to the main part of town as we could to grab a bite and avoid the shut off and dangerous central area of the City.  We walked from there, after lunch, into what we believed the heart of the city.  You could begin to see the destruction as we walked along a graveyard where most of the headstones, fences and spires had been turned over or sunken in from the February earthquake – a very eerie image indeed.  Continuing into the city we saw less and less souls and were greeted, rather, with more and more desolate destruction.  Much of what was destroyed or damaged had now been demolished and removed to avoid any dangerous structural collapses, but in certain areas everything seemed to remain untouched – like it was all left just how it had been on that destructive day.  I did not expect it to be as moving as it was, but the feeling of the city was almost something of nuclear fallout.  Obviously this is nothing close to that level, but that is the feeling and appearance the city set out at the epicenter, walking along the fenced off central, and most dangerous, area of the city.  Truly something else, and you wonder if a city so destroyed would ever be able to bounce back with continual aftershocks happening so frequently – one happened about 3 hours before we landed, it turned out.  One comforting thing we came to discover is the city had life yet as we walked from the center of the destroyed town, some 200 meters away we came on the park and a Buskars (street performer) Festival taking place that afternoon.  We figured, why not? And give it a whirl.  These guys needed desperately to stick to the streets; it was nothing more than mildly amusing and slightly awkward.  Nonetheless, the park was extremely crowded and full of cheer, and it was good to see people carrying on with life as normal as they could.  Hopefully things will continue to look up for Christchurch.

The end is a blur: got to the airport at 11:00pm, slept until 4:30am, caught our flight to Auckland at 6:30am, arrived in Auckland at 8:00am or something, sat in the airport until out flight at 3:30pm, arrived in Sydney at 6:20pm, and finally made our way back just the way we had started to Wesley college.  Time to make the best of the last few days we have in this amazing country.  Certainly going to miss everything.

Asylum Bound - 1-24-12

Artist rendering of our meeting.

A relatively laid back day, all in all, we kicked it off with a trip to Unitec, a vocational, technical college that focuses solely in Engineering, Architecture, and Construction.  Their campus is about a 20 minute bus ride outside of the main center in Auckland in an adaptively reused insane asylum.  Gives this educational medium satirically ironic undertones, I would say, and it made our meeting feel as though we were ourselves in a nut house and having a One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest moment.  Not quite a building I was thinking of studying in my thesis, but it is still an interesting structure as the school is extremely limited as to what they can do with partitions, leaving an entire wing full of padded wall cells.  I thought walking down the hall of Haley was eerie.

asylum. 

Asylum funyard.

Either way, it was interesting talking with several of the faculty of Unitec about everything construction for several hours.  We were all relatively low key, quiet and altogether droll; presumably due to the 4 week slump we all seem to be in.  Strange phenomenon, but either way this was a valuable experience in making good contacts and learning some particulars of construction in New Zealand that we may otherwise never have considered.  Small country with not a lot of infrastructure, so things are quite different here than they are in the much more built up Australian neighbor.  4.2 million people in the whole of the country and almost half of them live in Auckland.  The urge to get into the countryside was all but overwhelming.

Awesome adaptive reuse.

The afternoon was spent free, and I took the time to go into town, have some of the best fish and chips ever on Vulcan Alley - served by one of the best looking Brazilians I had ever met - and headed to the Auckland art museum to study one of the more impressively maintained historical buildings I have seen so far down south.  Everyone else headed off to nap, blog, and what have you, so I was flying solo, an admittedly nice afternoon, if I don't say so myself.  I don't understand art, but I enjoy it and spent a lot of time simply wandering through the halls, taking in the eclectic array of work all the while studying, documenting, and enjoying the construction of this beautifully reused historical building - something I am much more keen to.  Refreshing afternoon and a whole lot of gained information, knowledge, and thoughts on this building.  Pretty successful day, and it is off to the Black Beaches of Piha to hopefully climb something, ride a wave, jump off something or an activity of the like.  Life's good.

Cheers.

Highest Heights - 1-23-12

 “New Zealand is not a small country but a large village.” -Peter Jackson

If that aint New Zealand,  I don't know what is.

Again touching on the acropolis appeal in cities throughout the world, we traveled to a park called "one tree hill", a name that has quite a negative connotation due to the horrible television show of the same title.  Alas, there are no ties between the two and we had an awesome walk through the park that was incidentally and accidentally diverted through a farmers field which was full of sheep and their respective signs of occupation (poop).  It was messy work scaling the hill and no man came out unscathed.  All in all the approach was worth the breathtaking view, and for the first time I actually felt like I was truly in New Zealand.  Very picturesque experience, back dropped by New Zealand's largest city.

Professor Curtis at our meeting.

Prior to the climb up the hill we spent the morning at New Zealand's biggest university, Auckland University - just a few blocks from the Waldorf, where we stayed.  We had a meeting with the head of the Engineering department, which also had a concentration in Construction Management. Her specific field of study was disaster relief, so it was very interesting to hear first hand on the progress in Christchurch after the devastation of a massive earthquake in February 2011 and the subsequent aftershocks that are keeping anything from moving along at any sort of successful rate, due to insurance companies requirements for provided payment - which includes a no aftershock period of something like 30 days.  The whole city had been literally trembling almost daily ever since the earthquake.  On the same insurance note, there had been a rippling effect in the increase of rates throughout the country of almost 30%.  Shows how devastating and influential, internationally, this earthquake has been, and it made us even more excited to get to Christchurch and experience it for ourselves.

After a tour of the campus with some PhD students, we said our thank yous and left their University with some extremely impressive and valuable new knowledge.  Overall great morning.  One thing I came to learn, disappointingly in fact, is that Auckland is not wholly committed to the utilization of adaptive reuse.  Guess that will just give me some time off in this town to enjoy the rather modern and fresh architecture throughout the city.  Being a very hilly country,  with Auckland as no exception, you are either walking up or down a hill at all times - something to the like of San Francisco -until you finally make it to the harbor where everything plains out to an awesome picturesque bay setting that is the cities main hub for great food, drink, and nightlife.  What better place to spend the afternoon before we head up to the Sky Tower.

Group at One Tree Hill

 Viaduct Harbour - forgive the "Olde English" spelling - seems to be the place to be on most nights of the week for those well to do individuals throughout Auckland.  This, in turn, means high prices for our shallow pockets.  We did a bit of shopping around and found an awesome Irish pub that served up some mean lamb chops and great beer.  Not the cheapest of places, but the atmosphere and view along the Viaduct was absolutely worth the money spent.  Off to the sky tower to take in the views of Auckland at sunset from the tallest building in New Zealand.  The sights from One Tree Hill were spectacular, but from 190 some odd meters, you could really appreciate the cities location as a simple dot in the incredibly dynamic and aggressive landscape for which New Zealand is known.  Had a beer, psyched ourselves up or down - dependent on the personality - for bungee jumping in Queenstown in some 6 days (we had all by now monetarily committed ourselves to jumping out of a 134m gondola strapped to a large rubber band - awesome).

Happy Chinese New Year...

Thats a frakin' sunset.

Only shot of Viaduct Harbour I got that night.

View down the elevator shaft.

Enjoying the sunset, hahaha.

Ended the night with the long uphill walk home which was fortunately through a park - seems that New Zealand, along with Australia, take their city's parks very seriously.  Everything is getting a bit blurry now, writing this after having spent our time off in Queenstown.  Time for some serious concentration.

Cheers.

Maori Wannabe - 1-22-12

Haka, baby.

All Black jersey.

Having read, heard about and discussed the Maori culture during our time in Australia, we started off our time in New Zealand with a trip to the Auckland War Memorial Museum, located in Aucklands beautiful botanical gardens, to experience the "Maori Cultural Experience".  Ohhh ahhh, so I thought, but this turned out to be more than just a cliche play on the culture to please the expectations of we, the tourist. The performance put on was done by direct descendents of the Maori people and their performance was awesome, just check out the videos.  They were a pretty gnarly group of people who supposedly came over thousands of years ago by boat from Indonesia.  That tough cultural identity is portrayed through their customs and traditions, and this performance did a great job of illustrating that.  This also drew back a memory I remember of seeing the All Blacks Rugby team do the "Haka", the Maori tribal war "dance".  Not so much a dance as much as an intimidating means of threatening and perhaps dissuading the enemy before war.  No wonder the All Blacks, founded on an all Maori team, won the world rugby championship played here in Auckland.  Forget Aussies, these are a gnarly people with incredible heritage and tradition.

Steele photo-bombed every device in the phone store.

When, admittadly naively, imagining how the culture and general demographic of New Zealand would be, I assumed that the majority of individuals would be employed in some sort of outdoor/adventure industry such as bungee jumping, fishing, rafting, rock climbing, or what have you.  I was shocked to see not only the amount of Maori population, but also the remnants of their traditions, language and culture scattered throughout the whole of Auckland.  There seems to be an extremely symbiotic relationship between the indigineous people and the most recent settlers; something that is quite refreshing and rare to see.  to illustrate, we have been greeted by several Caucasian individuals in the traditional Maori tongue in order to honor their heritage, and there are several Maori television channels that broadcast strictly Maori entertainment: something I don't think I would frequent even if I could understand their language, having seen bits and pieces of their attempts at sitcoms.   Their seems to have been an extraordinarily peaceful assimilation and willingness to coexist between the indigenous people and the more recent inhabitants.  Something that is quite impressive and wholesome as compared to their closest neighbor's relations.  Great to see.

Matt getting a bit of a tight squeeze in the door.

Vulcan Street: awesome food and beer.

After our museum stint, we went into the heart of Auckland on Queen Street to get some long over due grubbing.  We found an alleyway tucked back from the street that was a simple walking lane full of really cool restaurants, one of which - I come to find out a couple of days later - employs a long lost love from Brazil, but that story is for another time.  We had an incredible meal, a couple of pints, and a subsequent food coma.  Recovering from our pie and pint induced slumbers, we did something presumably awesome.  I can't quite recollect what that was at this point, but I will reconvene with the group ang get back to that later.  Great first day, looking forward to more of the same.

Cheers.

Number one country to visit: check - 1-21-12

Sub par attempt at a panorama from our hotel...

No pictures from today, unfortunately.

A bittersweet departure was barely acknowledged as I dizzily packed up my bag that morning and lazily slumped off for the lobby where our taxis were waiting - in a zombie-like manner, if you didn’t get the picture already.  This is going to be our longest and most miserable flight of the trip, one is an inevitable obstacle, the other: self-imposed.  Either way, I would do anything for any length of time to simply step foot on New Zealand – much less spend 10 days here.  

The flight flew by as exhaustion trumped excitement, and I woke up to my French smelling, and sounding, neighbor told me all about the scenery as we flew over the approaching coast of New Zealand.  The iconic green countryside of rolling hills abutted against rocky coastlines was immediately prominent and stuck out in such a way that the land appeared nearly mystical.  No wonder Peter Jackson picked this incredible country to be the primary filming location for the epic trilogy Lord of the Rings - I'll try to keep the Lord of the Rings references and comments to a minimum.  First thing I got the urge to do was get on a horse and ride for as long as possible through the country’s varying and wholly bucolic landscape.  But that’s just me.

We took a drive through the outskirts of town to our hotel right on the edge of the university area and just a few blocks away from the main city center, Queens Street.  Unfortunately we did not discover this until the following day, and we happened to take a wrong turn to the red light district of Auckland.  Not the best first impression, but that will fortunately be trumped shortly. 

 All in all, this was a day of stepping out and trying to discover as much as we could in weather that was not conducive to anything outdoors.  Subsequently, we only saw the rougher area of town, which every big city unfortunately has, but tomorrow is looking up as we have several cultural events planned.  Already in love with this city simply knowing how proximal extreme landscape and overwhelming environment is to where we currently reside.  All sorts of thoughts, dreams and activities in mind are flying around upstairs.  Not the soundest night of sleep, even in the nicest accommodation to date.

Triple header - 1-20-12

The days seem to be getting shorter and I am not a writer, I'm a thinker; forgive my rough patches.

Epicenter of everything: our shrine.

Down on the MCG pitch.

Various sports teams across the world – particularly in the states, to my knowledge – sub their respective home stadiums a Temple of their trade.  The place that fans go to pay homage to the greats of their team and where players go to lay their hearts, bodies and souls on the line for one another in a show of competition.  This brings to mind places like Wrigley Field, Lambo Field, or Jordan Hare Stadium.  All of these sports carry a particular grit and history to them that is hard to describe and is what sets the diehard setting for these stadium “temples”, but to call a cricket stadium a temple is going a little overboard – from my recently exposed viewpoint, anyway (sorry, Anoop).  This analogy between stadium and temple, competition and worship was made by our resident volunteer tour guide on a walking tour of the Melbourne Cricket Grounds.  I don’t understand it, but these guys live, breathe, and eat cricket.  I am not so sure I will ever understand this obsession with the sport, but damn I respect it.  Few people in the world can get so excited for such a seemingly droll and slow paced sport; which it is. 

Incredible guide, Roger.  He's the man.

Awesome structure we toured and I failed to mention.

Our tour guide, Roger, had been a member at the MCG, as it’s called, since the late 40s, something he made a point to announce several times, proudly.  Also, throughout the tour he would point out where this happened, where he was seated when his team won the championship, or what his regular seat is in the member lounge.  He really did make the tour, as in any other circumstance this would just be another regular old concrete, two tiered stadium.  He added so much flavor and history to the tour that it gave life to the structure.  Not only was cricket played here, however, but also the national past time of Australian Rules Football was battled on the same pitch.  ARF is unique to Australia, but between the main cities across the country covet championships and wins in true Australian fashion: passionately crazy.  Or would it be passionate craziness? Either way, they take it serious down here, and I will definitely have to make it back down here for when the season opens up.

We had a break in the early afternoon, so I took advantage of the time off to get some research and took a walk around downtown at some of the major historical buildings that are still being utilized.  They were all very well done, and they held on to the deep societal culture throughout the city that is so important to the identity of any region of people.  Not to bore, I got some solid contact information, pictures, and information on a lot of the adaptively reused buildings in Melbourne.  Boring, eh?

Moving on, we went back and dappered up for a play we were to attend that evening as a group before hitting the town one last time with some newly acquired friends.  The play was pretty good once I got the ear for the ridiculously foreign bogan (Australian for redneck) tongue and could finally follow what was happening.  The most notable event that happened during the play 

The awkward void we had to fill.

occurred after a lady had been fairly sassy towards Andrew when we were simply passing through their row to our seats; an inevitable inconvenience for them.  We later decided, when the angry couple took our seats in the first intermission and sat 2 seats apart – to cool off during the fight presumably – that we would sit in the two buffer seats between them – one of which held her purse. It was hilariously awkward, but funny nonetheless. Actually it was really just awkward; especially when the play was over and the poor guy had to let us out first to wait on his wife, girlfriend, or whatever to get out following us two fools.  That’s what she gets; super wet blanket.  Hit the town fairly late that night to send off some friends we had made during our stay and had an incredible time. 

League of extraordinary gentlemen.

Ended simply, after a 2 hour “nap” we are off to New Zealand, and with this comes the subsequent dethroning of my number one place to visit.  Being that I am writing that as I am already here, I have almost moved past Melbourne and onto NZ, and I think this country, beyond previous speculation, will easily trump Australia.   Psyched.

Artsy fartsy - 1-19-12

"It is a gratification to me to know that I am ignorant of art, and ignorant also of surgery. Because people who understand art find nothing in pictures but blemishes, and surgeons and anatomists see no beautiful women in all their lives, but only a ghastly stack of bones with Latin names to them, and a network of nerves and muscles and tissues." -Mark Twain, 1906

----

I'm not sure whether the resonate buzz of endorphins from the previous night's festivities had anything to do with my sincere appreciation and personal interest in all the pieces of work throughout the National Museum of Victoria, but this was one of my favorite art gallery tours I have ever been on.  We all pretty much went off on our own throughout the museum and took time to take in what we could where we could in such a massive museum with limited time.  I was moved with pretty much every piece, though several stuck out more than other - particularly the oil paintings on wood, and was inspired to delve into creating, or attempting in any measure, art.  The longing to become a Renaissance man took me over as I realized how much time we spend idly watching TV or playing games and what have you.  If one spent even a portion of this time essentially wasted on bettering yourself, who knows what kind of person you could be.  Sounds old fashion, but that is simply the feeling I got after looking through this gallery.  Some of the pieces that stood out are to follow, and I really only took pictures of the ones I thought everyone could appreciate, either funny or interesting:

Someone please get this guy a beer.

Scene of a poisoning.  Intense.

Our very own Professor Peter Weiss' portrait.

The original pimp cup.  Step down lil' john.

Lions are apparently predators of horses? Who knew?

Interesting modern piece.

Scotland, baby. And an example of why you should go to museums: this doesn't do a bit of justice.

Kites EVERYWHERE.

Quite the eclectic collection throughout the gallery, and unfortunately we had barely enough time to cover half of the museum.  Fortunately, however, we were off for St. Kilda, the main “beach” of Melbourne.  I use this term blithely because I’m not sure that it opens up to the ocean or not; I believe it is the beach along the main bay that Melbourne lies on.  Probably should take a look at a map and figure that one out.  Neither here nor there, we headed south from the city to enjoy some beach relaxation, as per our usual regime everywhere we go.  

Not only did this beach not open up to the true ocean which would expose it to the gnarly coastal tides and waves, but the wind on this particular day was extreme.  This created a situation ideal for kite boarding, and on this particular day the bay was covered with about a hundred kite boarders whipping back and forth, somehow avoiding a collision that could potentially split atoms.  We immediately looked into lessons or rental, but, like everything else across this country, the prices were a bit pricey for our blood when we could do it back home for a fraction of the price.  We instead opted for a cheap lunch, cheap beer and enjoyed the pros showing off.  Not the idyllic beach we had come accustomed to messing around on, but this was uniquely stunning and more entertaining than most.

Group a LOOP.

We took the load off that night to revive ourselves – something I am personally not too fond of.  A necessary evil, I suppose, now and again.  It’s all about balance.  Luckily the scale is tilted in favor of action.  

Cheers.