I walked again

I didn't want to walk home tonight because I'd been super sleepy and cold all day, and I just wanted to get home to my couch as quickly as possible. But then I just walked anyway. Go, me. 

My week is half over. Hurrah! I don't have a hump day anymore; the hump arrives when I leave the office on Tuesdays.  

Imagine the old book smell in these centuries-old libraries! 

At last: what I did on my holidays

I've lost enthusiasm for writing a lengthy post about my week in Sydney, but there's a few gleeful things I want to show you, so here's a bunch of photos.

The entrance to Tooronga Zoo

 

 One of the meerkats, pretending he's people

There didn't appear to be any otters in the otter enclosure,
 but there was a duck

It was rather perplexed by the glass. It was paddling like mad but going nowhere. It's pretty funny when you can see below the water as well as above. More zoo photos here 

 

 Matthew Flinders' sea-faring moggie, Trim, beside the State Library of 

New South Wales, near a statue of his owner 

The reading room of the library's Mitchell Wing is a light and pleasant space, but it doesn't come close to the grandeur of  Melbourne's La Trobe Reading Room

 The facade of the Mitchell Wing is not unlike the exterior of the 

State Library of Victoria

This carved inscription on the wall in the foyer of the Mitchell Wing was my favourite bit of my (short) library visit 

I like this sign at the Botanic Gardens, which are lovely

I didn't smell the roses but I took lots of photos of the water lilies

 Lotus pods

Lotus buds

A very tall eucalyptus tree in the gardens

 Iconic Bondi Beach - the Bondi to Coogee coastal walk was my favourite part of my time in Sydney

My first glimpse of Waverley Cemetery. See here and here 

for more photos of the cemetery and the coastal walk

 This SIGN made me CHUCKLE

 Coogee beach, the end of the 6km walk. 

Does anyone else primary schooled in Australia in the 1980s remember the ABC singing books and the song about "chish 'n fips 'n riko cholls, somato tauce 'n raussage solls"? 

 After a few days of stunning harbourside scenery I needed a bit of inner urban grunge. I spotted this on someone's front fence in inner city Newtown.  The cards were just little plain squares with 'To' at the top and 'From' handwritten at the bottom, but still...

A few doors down, I saw this sign

And this 

 And this, I presume, is Florian. Home safe, albeit legless 
and rather pale after his ordeal

While I was in Sydney, there was a report on the news about the corpse plant in the Botanic Gardens in Melbourne blooming for the first time in seven years. The bloom, which is said to smell like rotting flesh, only lasts for a few days, so you can imagine my irritation that it had the audacity to flower while I was interstate. Such impertinence! 

I visited the gardens on the day I got home not expecting to see anything (or smell anything). This is the sight that greeted me (click on the links above for comparison, if you don't know what it looks like in full bloom):

Teehee. Rather flaccid. Coincidentally, I just learnt from Wikipedia that the plant's scientific name, Amorphophallus titan,  means 'large, misshapen phallus". 

Nevertheless, it's still an interesting plant, and some if its neighbours in the tropical hothouse were interesting and unusual too, like this white bat plant. 

Well spotted, lamb on a ram, old school

I walked home from work via Coles on Swan Street in Richmond, just to add a bit of extra exercise to my day (and buy something for dinner). As I walked along Stewart Street, which runs between the train line and a pocket of light industrial buildings, I glanced left and saw this old sign:

The degree of difficulty of spotting it was quite high - it's partially hidden in a sort of courtyard, behind the building fronting Stewart Street. Well done, me. 

There was a sign on the other end of the building too. 

I like the old painted street sign as well. 

Above this sign was a kookaburra with a snake in its beak.

Further along on another building I saw this: 

It's a LAMB ON A RAM!!! There's a painted over sign along the top of the building but I can't quite make out what it says. 

I forgot I took this photo at the Little Library at Melbourne Central on the weekend. As well as borrowing books, you can also leave a book review. They're handwritten and organised alphabetically. Who needs the internet, eh? 

Henry, dedication, growing up

Luke and I are off to the refurbished Hamer Hall for the first time tomorrow to see Henry Wagons in the first installment of a series called Performance Enhancers. He'll be chatting about his influences and performing. 

Henry also has a new "mini-album" coming out in a few weeks, which is sort of his first solo album (it mostly features duets). And look at the cover! It's Kanes Bridge, the footbridge over the river at Yarra Bend Park, seen here on my other blog. 

I went to the gym tonight. On a Friday. I've only done that once or twice in all the years I've been a gym-goer. It just seems wrong...even if I have nothing planned besides staying home on the couch. I didn't manage to fit in my second workout on Wednesday or Thursday, and I don't want to go on the weekend, or go a full week between gym visits. I did that last week, and was sore for three days afterwards. 

I saw the duck family this morning on the river's edge. The ducklings have doubled in size in the space of a week! *sigh* They grown up so fast. 

There's a story in The Age today on the Little Library at Melbourne Central, which I discovered last weekend. 

Blogiversary, counting down, Little Library

Happy first day of spring! Happy birthday to Gleeful! Four years old today. It was a beautiful sunny day. I had a massage in the morning (the ouchy type, not a pampering one) and then got my hair and nails done.  I'm still keeping up this girly girl caper (although I think my biker boots balanced it out).

And all day I've been counting down the hours until Luke gets back. His plane is due to land in just over three hours. I wish I could meet him at the airport so I get to see him sooner and because it's lovely to walk off the plane into a big hug.   I'll just have to be patient...

Here's another Mali. This one's in front of Melbourne Central, near the corner of Swanston and Elizabeth Streets.

I entered Melbourne Central by going up an escalator I've never been on before and finding myself in unfamiliar territory, which doesn't happen very often in one's own city. And look what I found!

It's the Melbourne Central Little Library - a small space that could have had a shop in it, but instead it's got shelves of books for people to borrow. What a fantastic idea. 

Library, wonder-chamber, beach

Today was the annual open day at the Supreme Court of Victoria and I finally got to see the impressive interior of the library. Apart from two volunteers on hand to answer visitors' questions, there was no one else in the library when we arrived. It was just Luke and me  standing under the dome with our mouths open, going "Wow". 

Sadly we weren't allowed to take photos but there's one here that shows the lower circumference of the the dome. The library is set out in a radial pattern, with the large inner circle lined with portraits of former Chief Justices and judges - including a portrait of my ancestor Sir Leo Cussen, who was a judge and also a President of the Melbourne Cricket Club and trustee of the National Gallery of Victoria and the State Library of Victoria. 

Beneath Sir Leo's portrait was a glass cabinet containing the handwritten court record of Ned Kelly's death sentence in 1880. 

Branching off from the centre were alcoves lined with shelves of legal books which gave off a faint aroma of old books. 

While we were at the court, we had a look in two of the court rooms, including one that had a very narrow winding staircase to bring the accused from the dungeon (yes, they call it a dungeon, although it's not used these days) up to their seat in the middle of the court room.  Access to the court room was by way of a removable section of floor a bit like a manhole cover. 

After leaving the court we dropped into one of the kookiest shops in Melbourne called Wunderkammer, which is a German word meaning 'wonder-chamber'. It sells 'scientific curiosities, artefacts and ephemera', including an array of stuffed animals, animal skeletons,  fossils, a rug made from the pelt of a mountain lion (with head), mounted butterflies, insects and spiders, and antique scientific and medical instruments. I was quite taken with the murder of crows. The door to the storeroom was open and there was a box of stuffed ravens in the doorway. 

Raaaaaaark

 Say 'aaaaah'

Disapproving elk disapproves 

(you can't blame him)

As we left Wunderkammer, I spotted this quaint old mail box near the shop door. 

We had lunch in the city before heading to South Melbourne. We walked past one of my favourite old signs - or collection of old signs - on an old chemist shop on Cecil Street.  

Luke spotted this large, but difficult to read, sign near the market. 

 'Produce' is about the only word I can discern

And then I saw this one...

Something 'Boot Repairer'

Then we caught the tram to South Melbourne beach to take photos. 

 Out the front of the South Melbourne Surf Lifesaving Club

 A tall ship way off in the distance

 This bird was hanging around near the fishermen on 

Lagoon Pier hoping for a snack

North Pacific Sea Star (a pest in our southern waters). 

 Faces in places - telescope thingie at Princes Pier

Little dark cloud doing its own thing

Let the comedy begin!

I am off to the Comedy Festival! I'm going to see David O'Doherty this Friday and I've also booked tickets for the last night of Daniel Kitson's show. I also want to see Mark Watson, and Aussies Josh Earle and Melinda Buttle. To begin with. Yay! Comedy!

Speaking of Mark Watson, I saw him at the IGA near my work on the way home tonight. I thought it was him, but I wasn't 100% sure and I couldn't hear him speaking to the checkout operator well enough to discern an English accent.  After he left, I asked the checkout dude if he was English and he was. It was him!

Have a look at these photos of the stunning Philosophical Hall of the Strahov Monastery Library in Prague. Wow!

Five days in...

The library entrance

Hello again from the Big Apple. My fifth day is drawing to a close, and my love affair for this place grows by the day. I feel like I'm sneaking around behind Melbourne's back, falling in love with another city. Don't worry, Melbourne; you will always be my No 1.

Since I last blogged, I have been to the library. Not just any old library, the New York Public Library, which is right up there in the library hall of fame, and for good reason. It's a jaw-droppingly impressive building. Marble as far as the eye can see, columns and arches and staircases (Beaux-Arts style, for those who are interested). But the jaw-droppingest bits were the McGraw Rotunda,  Bill Blass Catalogue Room and the Rose Main Reading Room. Simply stunning. So much ornate detail.  

Not only does is it a feast for the eyes, it has some amazing treasures in its collection - the letter Christiopher Columbus wrote to the Spanish king and queen notifying them he had discovered the New World, one of five copies Thomas Jefferson made of his draft Declaration of Independence (which contains a section abolishing slavery, which was promptly removed by Congress), the first Gutenberg Bible (dating back to the 1450s) to come ashore in America, a desk, lamp and chair belonging to Dickens and the original (now very threadbare) toy animals that inspired AA Milne to wrote Winnie The Pooh.

You can't see all of these things, but I did see the bible, Dickens' desk and the toys.

I had to abandon plans to go to the Empire State Building due to poor weather so I grabbed a Big Salad for lunch at a gourmet deli (my god, what an eye-popping array of food!) and then headed to the Museum of Sex. Yes, they do have a museum for that. It's not as tawdry as it sounds, although the first exhibit was on sex and the moving image, so you can imagine what they had on display there. Very bizarre experience seeing a money shot while you are in a room with fully dressed strangers. Also difficult to concentrate on reading the information displays with porn music and lady moaning in the background. I mean, I was there for the information after all.

The other displays were far less spicy and far more educational (unless watching a bonobo chimp orgy is your thing). I did touch a penis, however. No, no real genitals at the Museum of Sex, unlike MoMA. It was a silicone one meant to simulate the male member (not very convincingly, however).

The weather was even worse after I  emerged from touching faux penii and watching porn, so I spent some time cruising the souvenir shops (yes, I now own an I Heart New York T shirt), then headed back to my hotel, again catching the right bus and ending up in the right place. Go, me.

Today I visited the Chrysler Building, including the awesome art deco lobby and Grand Central Station, which is yet another jaw-droppingly gorgeous building, especially the main concourse with its vast blue ceiling featuring a mural of the zodiac and huge arched windows at either end.

Then it was showtime! I had a ticket to see West Side Story on Broadway. I've not been to many musicals in my life, and I've never seen West Side Story. I confess I'm not really that big a fan of musicals to be honest, but when on Broadway... I chose WSS because it's set in New York and I'm staying on the West Side.

I enjoyed it - lots of colour, great choreography and songs I recognised even if I never knew where they were from ("I feel pretty, oh, so pretty..."). Oh, and hot guys with muscular biceps. Noice.

It was at the Palace Theatre - surprise surprise, another beautiful building.

After the show I had some cheesecake (another New York specialty) and a can of Dr Pepper before heading to St Patrick's Cathedral. I walked past it the other day without knowing what it was and thought it was impressive from the outside, but today I went inside. Wow. Amazing. Can you tell I'm running out of superlatives? (Strange seeing security guard and so many tourists taking photos in a church though).

Then I headed home again. Tomorrow I'm finally going to visit the Statue of Liberty. Got to be up bright and early and down to the ferry terminal at 9am. I'm thinking I might even brave the subway in rush hour. I'm told it's bedlam - and I'm sure it is - but I'm a big girl...I'll just make sure I allow plenty of time to get there.

I also have a ticket for the hop-on, hop-off tourist bus tomorrow so will spend the afternoon pootling about on that visiting various places on my must-see list. I'm hoping the weather will be fine enough for a trip up the Empire State Building too.