4/6/2012

If I had any doubts about my bike they were all eliminated this morning when I rode past 3 miles of construction on the tram tracks.

I went into the city and took a free walking tour of Melbourne. 

Our tour guide was a student at RMIT the local art school so the tour had a little bit of an artsy-goth feel.

This building in federation square has been named the 5th ugliest building in the world.  I think it's decretive and fun but apparently I'm the only one with that opinion.

On the sidewalk of federation square is poetry of the lost generation on Australia.  If you don't know what that it the lost generation are the orphans that were taken to Australia to work.  There are several good documentaries.

St. Paul's cathedral is a major architectural achievement in Melbourne but this version of St. Paul's is Anglican and not Catholic.

There is some fantastic grafitti in Melbourne. The one ally way is artwork by invitation only while some of the other places are just basic tagging.  Either way it is very impressive and quite cool.

The city square is not very exciting.  I go past it all the time but I hadn't realized the it is the city square until today.  It was designed well just no one ever goes there.  It's crowing feature is underwater art exhibits.


This is a monument to the 8 hour work day.

As the story goes Melbourne was the first place in the world to institute the concept of 8 hours work, 8 hours rest, and 8 hours relaxation. This is represented by the three brass 8's on the top of the monument.

This brass dog isn't all that exciting.  What is exciting is that he is cemented into the ground.  Most of Australia's art is free standing and thus movable.  Unfortunately, Australian's also like to steal artwork.  They do it as a joke and normally replace the piece with some sort of toy, ironic item, or joke.  After the pig was recasted the city council decided thet weren't putting up with jokesters so they bolted him down.

The Elizabeth bridge over the Yara river has an exact match somewhere in England.

This fantastic fountain outside the exhibition building is normally open so you can actually sit in it.  It was fenced off today for a garden show.  If you look on the second level there are stone platypus.  Male platypus actually have poisonous burrs on their feet.  Who knew?

After the tour I asked the guide where I could get some good pizza.  She pointed me toward one of her favorites.  I don't think that I found the right place but a combination of her recommendation and google maps led me to Veggie bar
where I got a reasonably priced organic pizza.  

I slowly made it back home, picking up information and lounging by the fountain.  I'm mildly convinced that my time in the sun today gave me heat exhaustion but it could just be the vacation laziness.  

Since tonight was the first night of passover I went to a sedar with one of Katie's friends from the gym.  It was a lovely 5hour sedar all in hebrew but the food was delicious, the company was nice, and I really enjoyed myself.

This is the controversial new soft matzo.  It is closer to the consistency of stale pita than it is to cardboard.It is made within regulation but I think one of the ingredients is questionable because some rabbis have declared it not Kosher.