Day 129

Today was such a busy but fun day! One of the woes of being off of school so early and having all my finals in the first week of finals is that even though I'm all done, none of my friends actually are. This did not stop some of my best friends here from going and celebrating my finale to Coretto's last night (love them!) but today was a different story – everyone actually had to study – so I had a wonderful day with me! I started off by walking towards the docklands which are actually like a 2 hour walk away but I was too cheap to actually buy a tram ticket, so I ended up just walking in that general direction. I ended up at this giant store that said the largest christmas store in Victoria, so I thought, why not? This is the first thing that greeted me when I walked through the door:

Yep, I'm definitely in Australia. And if you can believe it, this baby was half off! Only 60 dollars for your own personal 10 ft tall blow up kangaroo! Don't worry parents, I didn't buy it (although I was definitely tempted to see it take up our entire family room).
Afterwards I walked out, got completely lost, and happened upon this absolutely beautiful park called Flagstaff Gardens. I found this cute little bench by some flowers, and since my oh so nice friend Brian had told me the other night that I'm “so white” I “should go to the beach”, I decided to sit in the sun and read my book until I was hungry. I ate lunch at this tiny little japanese place on King St (actually the street that everyone tells you to avoid at night because you'll probably get caught in a drive by. I decided to risk it when I saw how many other people were walking down the street). Then walked down the street and ran into the aquarium!

There was a student price for the aquarium, so I was able to get 10 dollars off the entry price to make it pretty reasonable! I'm happy I went too, since although I thought that every zoo/aquarium around the world is relatively the same – not true! Most of the fish in the aquarium were native to places around Asia and Australia! It definitely wasn't as good as the Boston Aquarium, and I'm not going to lie, I was EXTREMELY disappointed when the cuttlefish exhibit was empty, but the adorable penguins, and huge manta rays swimming over me in the clear glass tunnel through the fish tank made it worth it!

After the aquarium I walked out to see the city circle tram stop right in front of me. It's this free tram service that goes in a circle around Melbourne's CBD that is very touristy, but I decided to hop on and see where it went. I was happily surprised that it brought me right down to the docklands! The place where it dropped me off reminded me of California with all these palm trees and they even had those celebrity stars in the ground! I only recognised one name:

So I walked around the docklands a bit and ended up at a big arcade with a ton of outlet stores! I hadn't had basically any retail therapy this entire trip so far, so I decided I should splurge a little and got new boots!! The best part about them too is that they were marked down from 200 dollars to only 40! I think we all know nothing makes me happier than a new pair of boots, so it was definitely worth the money!
Then I got back on the tram and headed back towards the CBD. It ended up on the opposite side of Melbourne near the parliament building, which I didn't even know existed. So I got off and walked around and ran into this beautiful huge church, which was across the street from a little tiny church that looked exactly like the kind of place I always pictured getting married in haha.

I finished off my day of adventuring with a stop at this adorable cafe I found called the Jellybean Cafe and got a pear and honey tea (DELICIOUS) and of course a handful of jellybeans that cost me 20 cents. I couldn't go to the Jellybean cafe and not have jellybeans! And now I'm already planning for tomorrows adventures – I'm going to make these last two weeks count!