Melbourne first full day
We met our tour guide and most of our touring crew last night. It looks like a good traveling group. Perhaps we’ll tag onto yesterday’s post with more description of that and the unofficial welcome dinner last night (official welcome dinner this evening).
Today started with the breakfast buffet, which was quite nice. Robert wasn’t thinking of this as a food trip, but Melbourne is proving to be a food city.
After breakfast we gathered for a walking tour. Our guide is rightfully serious about being on time, so we got started without a bunch of dawdling and waiting.
We had already noticed Melbourne’s architecture, which is an eclectic mix of modern and older. They are pretty serious about retaining historical facades, and very practical about interior modifications. Melbourne has many arcades and malls, not in the sense most often encountered in the US.
These two characters are in the first arcade we walked through.
There aren't so many flat facades in Melbourne, at least not where we've been so far.
We can argue about aesthetics, but there's not much argument about the lack of boring and flat. Also, some of our tour group with our tour guide in the center and a particularly suspicious character to his right (left in photo).
I assume the red thing is a deliberate feature intended perhaps to reference the yellow. As opposed to a red carpet hung out to dry.
Railroad station on left.
On our tour we revisited the street art laneway. I wanted to capture the face-off partner of the bird from yesterday.
I noticed the sun filter provided by the semi-transparent semi-art on a walkway.
An architectural mix, with two of Australia's official flags. I thought I'd captured the lower one at full extension but it turns out I missed. Anyhow, it's the official aboriginal flag, which before today I did not know existed.
Most of our tour group. The sidewalk is the front part of a very long eel, with lots of aboriginal symbols on it.