Day 74: A Stroll Around Melbourne CBD

I'd been researching the best and cheapest way to get from Japan (where I would be 2 weeks from now) to Bucharest (which I hoped to be at before May 1, in about 5 weeks) and realized that Japan has a long national holiday, called "Golden Week", lasting from April 27 to May 6 where both international and domestic flight prices go up dramatically. And so, after a few hours of trial and error that is the inevitable process of filling in an open-ended flight itinerary, I was lucky enough to find tickets from Tokyo to Chengdu, fit in a few days exploring Chengdu, Chengdu to Bangkok, a few days pause in Bangkok, then a flight from Bangkok to Bucharest with an overnight layover in Dubai. All of these flights leave and arrive at reasonable, late morning to early evening times (with the exception of Tokyo to Chengdu, which arrives in Chengdu at 12:40 in the morning -- although there are visa-on-arrival laws that make this a potential pro rather than a con). All together, these flights cost me about $550. That's $200 cheaper than doing a multi-flight sprint from Japan to Bucharest just before the holiday price spike. And I would expect the additional airport transfer expenses to cancel out with the cheaper food and accommodation expenses in the worst case. The downside is that I spend a week less in Japan than originally planned, but just over two weeks still seems like a fair amount of time to begin exploring the Kansai/Tokyo areas. Overall, I think I was extremely lucky to be able to put together such an itinerary at an affordable price, as in some cases -- like Bangkok to Bucharest -- there was only one carrier (Flydubai) offering a flight for much less than $450 (and AirAsia, the $450 carrier, wanted to fly down to Kuala Lumpur before going to Bucharest, even though they didn't sell a cheaper ticket if you were to leave directly from KL. Really AirAsia???).

All of this research happened yesterday afternoon and evening, and I didn't get around to buying the tickets until this morning (didn't trust myself to make such large purchases when tired). After circumventing the usual crappy airline websites and payments not processing for no reason at all, I had my tickets and went out to explore more of Melbourne CBD for the rest of the day.

Looking towards the Royal Exhibition Building, just south of Melbourne Museum

My first stop was St. Patrick's Cathedral, the tallest and largest church building in Australia.

On my way down Spring St. past the parliament buildings, I stopped at The Old Treasury Building, now a museum with free admission.

Of the interesting things I can remember from my visit, I discovered that:

• An old court of Melbourne's was designed by a 16-year-old after the gold rush drained the older, skilled workers from Melbourne. This 16-year-old got the position after being hired into an intern-like position at age 15.
• Postage used to be very expensive, so to save money people would cross-write by writing to the end of the page, rotating the page 90 degrees, and beginning anew from the top of the page. Of course, they would repeat the process on the backside as well. This astounded me because even when written "straight", handwriting from that period is nearly illegible to my eyes.
• Melbourne began when John Batman traded aboriginals blankets, handkerchiefs, tomahawks, sugar, among other things for 600,000 acres of land around what we now call Port Phillip. Interestingly (the museum didn't mention this, but Wikipedia does), the treaty was the "first and only documented time when Europeans negotiated their presence and occupation of Aboriginal lands directly with the traditional owners". This deal was probably not fully comprehended by the aboriginals, who did not share our concept of land treaties and ownership. Nevertheless, the then governor of New South Wales shortly thereafter declared the treaty void under the assumption that the area had been under the Crown's ownership the entire time and that the aboriginals had no claim to the land when the deal was made.

From Parliament Hill I hopped on the circle tram and jumped off a few stops later at Flinders St. Station. Nearby there is a neat alleyway reminiscent of Post Alley near Pike Place Market in Seattle, but with fairly priced food and drinks.

After sitting down with a cuppa I popped out the north side of the alleyway and into the nearby Melbourne City Library (not the State Library of Victoria).

I picked a random book off the shelf ("Misfit Economy" by Alexa Clay and Kyra Maya Phillips) and a few dozen pages in found a page about my old employer!

Copyright someone else (please don't sue me!)

Leaving the library in search of food, I found a surprisingly cheap Vietnamese restaurant along Elizabeth St. and caught the 96 tram back to the hostel for the night.