melbourne: day one

Behold the first of five, count them... five, montages constructed from the 858 photos I took on my trip... this one details highlights from each of the five days... and since there are five rows and five days, that's a row a day.

The word for today is "woah" (I saw it as part of a bit of graffiti, but it definitely fits)...

I was up at more or less my usual time this morning which gave me plenty of time to get organised and I was ready and waiting when La Cousina (who was taking us to the airport) rocked up with Ma and Princess T. We lobbed up to the airport on time, checked our bags in, had breakfast (for which they tried to charge me double thanks to overly helpful but dopey staff who weren't wearing their spectacles) and went through some of the vague plans for the next five days with Princess T (or PT, since I'm lazy and the other one takes too long to type).

The flight was delayed by about half an hour, which we made up about half of on the flight over, but the stupid tower at the other end made the plane circle because they were busy. I'm still not the best flyer... I don't know what it is... I think it's more about the banking and the acsent/descent than the actual flying. But I had a window seat, so I wasn't too bad... a little bit nauseous, but that was about it.

And before I knew it we were in Melbourne... woohoo!

Unfortunately when I went to adjust my "very expensive" watch to Melbourne time the winder knob came off in my hand and I couldn't reattach it... looks like I'm going to need to find a new watch.

We came down the escalator to the baggage area and I saw our hire car driver holding up the sign with PT's name on it... and she hadn't noticed, so I pointed it out to her (she didn't react very much at the time but it definitely became part of the story when I heard her tell it later). After grabbing our bags the driver took us out to the car.

Actually, it wasn't a car at all. I'd just booked a plain old regular car... a sedan in fact. But because of the way that their schedule worked out, we got a free upgrade to a limousine! And let me tell you... being chauffeured from the airport to your hotel in a limo is definitely the right way to travel. I had to resist doing the royal wave out of the window a few times. And PT just had to call EVERYONE (okay not really, but I can honestly say that I wasn't aware how much teenagers, particularly teenage girls, are glued to their fucking mobile phones).

When we got to the hotel we did the check-in thing, and I have to say that the manager was about 500,000 times LESS funny than he thought he was... he was on the edge of creepy and weird to be honest, he kept giggling at nothing in particular.

Fortunately the room is definitely the nicest (out of a very small selection, granted) hotel room I've ever stayed in. And for once, it looks exactly like the picture in the brochure (well, website). It's also the only hotel room I've ever had where there's a real life actual view. So there was lots of standing at the window naked for no good reason *grin*. Actually it's technically not a "room", it's an apartment... two rooms and there's a bedroom and a lounge room with a couch and table and chairs and baby kitchen with a dishwasher and microwave and washing machine. It's probably similar in size all together to the room I stayed in in Sydney, but it definitely feels and looks nicer. And once again I got the nicer (ie larger) room. Through no intervention on my part, it just worked out that way when the chuckling manager was handing out the key cards.

Once we'd unpacked and sorted ourselves out (and stopped in at the Indian restaurant in the basement of the hotel building to make a reservation for tonight) we wandered off to find some lunch (which I think we got from Wrapper in Galleria) and just have, well, a wander really. And wander we did... we wandered and wandered and wandered and wandered. There is going to be LOTS of going into somewhat poxy girly clothes shops during this holiday (and stupidly, places that we HAVE in Adelaide)... and PT has some dubious taste when it comes to clothes.

Fortunately I managed to work in some street art photography while we were wandering, including a very old (and almost completely obliterated by tags and crap) Benzo piece... in fact the tagging thing was a bit of an issue, a lot of the good street art was at least partially covered by stupid tags. It did get me wondering if because Melbourne is supposedly cracking down on graffiti, street artists aren't willing to spend the time it takes to do large scale work and risk being arrested/fined, but mindless taggers can just walk past with a texta and deface things. Sad really... and I'm sure it's exactly the opposite of what the crackdown was supposed to achieve.

After the street art wander we headed down to Federation Square, and I think I spotted the Bentley Race building on the way... it's pretty distinctive (well, the neighbouring buildings are anyway).

Sadly today wasn't all beer and skittles... in fact there was a distinct dearth of either.

While we were at Federation Square I kept leaving Ma and PT and wandering off to snap photos of stuff, and as we were leaving, I wanted to snap the theatre on the opposite side of the road... so I went to jump up onto this seat/concrete block thing (yeah, you can see where this is going, can't you)... obviously I didn't make it, not only did I bang my hand pretty badly (there's this bruise line across half of my palm), but I also smacked the front of my trusty little Nikon against the concrete. Once I'd sorted myself out I looked at the camera and my blood ran cold.

"Lens Error".

Yep... I killed my camera. The lens wouldn't extend fully, or retract... the front cover of the lens was about 45 degrees around from where it would normally sit... and the camera wouldn't turn off... cue Very Unhappy Yani!

Since we were in Fed Square already, we went down to the Information Centre to ask where the digital camera shops were, and fortunately they're all in the Digital Camera District on Elizabeth Street. We wended our way up there, and ended up going into Camera House (not where I was initially going to go, but they do have stores all over the country, so that's a bonus)... I spoke to one of the nice men (Carlos... the store was full of pretty, pretty, pretty staff, but Carlos was the first staff member to make eye contact with me... and I think I was still suffering from shock, so I didn't really care) and he said that getting the old camera repaired would be $200-300 because I'd rooted the lens, and he could show me some better cameras in about the same price range.

You know what's really odd. I bought the Nikon on October 8, 2005... and here I was buying it's replacement a week shy of four years to the day. Spooky.

Carlos suggested this camera... it's the Canon PowerShot SD1200 IS... it's physically smaller, has 10MP (3 more than the Nikon), and was about half the price of my old one.

Granted it doesn't have as many functions and modes and stuff as the Nikon, but then I only used about 10% of those anyway, so it's not really any great loss. It has built in image stabilisation and, unlike the Nikon, laughs at low light. In fact it takes shots that I never would have even attempted with the Nikon.

Normally I might have ummed and ahhed (like I do about pretty much everything) and maybe gone next door to a different store, or further up the road to yet another store... but I felt like I'd lost a limb or a friend or something... so I didn't fuck around... Carlos recommended the Canon, so after a brief moment of indecision, I bought the Canon. Which may very well be the quickest purchase of it's kind I've ever made.

They didn't have any decent cases though, and my old one would be too big for it (plus it's four years old now), so I asked the girl working the register where the nearest Crumpler store was (because I'm turning into a total label whore for Crumpler products)... turns out it was quite literally around the corner in Little Bourke Street... about two or three stores away. So we went around the corner and I bought a Thirsty Al case, in red naturally, from the very pretty Crumpler boy (whose name, contrary to what the receipt says, could not have been "Irene").

Okay... *deep breathing*... I now have a new camera... it's a Canon... and the battery is charging as we speak.

Once we'd gotten me over my childhood trauma, we went back to looking at girly clothes stores... blerk... fortunately I did manage to escape off to Minotaur (woohoo, comics and pop culture a-go-go) while they were looking for something somewhere else. I could have spent ages (and lots of $$) in there... so much stuff!

We then headed back to the hotel since it was getting on towards dinner time... and after I set the camera battery charging I fiddled around a bit with no real results, then had a shower and got dressed for dinner (which sounds much grander than it was... I basically just changed my clothes).

Now I haven't had Indian food (real, proper, restaurant quality Indian food) in a good long while... but I have to say that Curry Vault is just LUSH! We had Lamb Rogan Josh (which is always my go-to dish), Aloo Saagwalla, Butter Chicken (for PT... don't even get me started) and both plain and keema naan with some plain rice. Delish!

After dinner we had planned to wander down to the Spencer Street DFO since it was Thursday night. Sadly it actually closed at 6pm (our dinner reservation was for 7pm)... but it's open until 9pm tomorrow (as it would be... I should have realised that the suburbs would have been open for late night shopping tonight, but the city wouldn't be open until tomorrow... just like here). So, as with the theme of the day, we wandered around a bit more before we came back to the hotel.

I left Ma and PT in their room and came back to my room to crash out. Much teevee, Subway cookies, journal writing and sleep to ensue.

Current Mood: