Trip to Melbourne

When I found out I had a new job I wanted to have a week off between the old and the new jobs to mentally prepare myself and rather than hang around home and do the routine stuff here like school, I decided to go somewhere.

Melbourne is relatively close to here if you fly so I spent some time on the internet booking cheap flights and a hotel room to stay in that was central. Both were achieved and off we went.

I really like Melbourne and was looking forward to spending some mother/son time together. We arrived at the hotel mid-afternoon so just spent the rest of the afternoon walking around the place, finishing up with a hot chocolate for him, coffee for me and a cake to share. This became a daily habit and I must say that more cafe’s should get marshmallows on hand to put in their hot chocolates. The only places that had marshmallows were the chocolate specialty places that there seem to be a lot of in the city centre of Melbourne.

We spent the next day at the Melbourne Museum, starting off with the Titanic artefact exhibition. I’ll do another post on that later but for now, we really enjoyed it. I was also really impressed with the museum. It was modern and interesting and you could easily spend a whole day there. We weren’t too far off by a whole day’s worth by the time we went through the Titanic exhibition, and had a look around at other exhibitions in the museum. We finished off by going to the Imax to see the Titanic artefact diving film that James Cameron made.

After a shaky start to the next day – mother/son clash stuff – we made it to the Tim Burton exhibition in Federation Square. I didn’t take any photos in the exhibition itself. I stood real close to Johnny Depp’s Mad Hatter costume and imagined him standing there actually wearing it. I just saw the film a few days beforehand and I think he’s a fantastic actor and played a really good Mad Hatter.

I hadn’t known much about Tim Burton’s early career so it was really interesting to read all about it. While I was off soaking in all the drawings and film bits and pieces JJ sat down and watched Hansel and Gretel, a weird Tim Burton version of the story. There were other films showing also, or bits and pieces from various films. There was also an activity room where you could do a drawing and pin it up on the pinboard if you wanted. Both JJ and I did a drawing – I must scan and share as we took them home.

Like the museum, there were other exhibitions that we hung around and had a look at too.

JJ really wanted to visit the aquarium so off we went. The first thing you see is a bunch of penguins in a manmade icy environment. Even though all animals in zoos and aquariums don’t have heaps of space to roam around in I felt the most sorry for the penguins for some reason.

However, there were plenty of photo opportunities and it gave JJ an opportunity to find more out about sea and water creatures.

We visited a place I’d been to on one of my last visits to Melbourne where I really liked the food. JJ ordered a ham and cheese toasted sandwich – not very adventurous but I’d rather he eat something than not.

I snuck this photo of him in while he was stretching his legs out in the laneway.

All in all we had a good trip together and our three days went pretty quickly. We flew with one of those budget airlines with only carry on baggage allowed and shock of shocks they weighed it on our way through to the gate. Mine was three kilos overweight so I had to redistribute. It didn’t help that my DSLR camera was in the bag so that pretty much got it down.

We had a day to unwind before heading off for a weekend school excursion in the Riverland. So it really wasn’t a relaxing week leading up to my new job but fulfilling nontheless.

View the rest of the photos here.