Get Ready! This is going to be a picture heavy post! I arrived safe and sound in Melbourne, Australia on Tuesday, Nov 12 after having left Vancouver on Sunday, Nov 10. I lost an entire day which was foreign to me. I was able to get about 7 hours of sleep on the plane. I watched “The Wolverine” & half of Season 1 of Homeland and read a bit before we (my Mom and I) arrived Down Under. The rest of the day was spent catching up with my Aunt & Uncle and truthfully being lazy as I really didn’t do well with jet lag. Wednesday we woke up nice and early after going to bed at 8pm and got ready to tackle the day. Despite non stop rain we got ourselves into the city via the train system to do as many rainy day activities as possible. The first stop was the Ian Potter Gallery. This is a second location for the National Gallery of Victoria which was the second stop on the trip.

The Ian Pottery Gallery had a gorgeous metal facade on the building. See the above picture. There is a glass art gift shop on the premise and my younger Australian cousin, Laurel Kohut had 3 pieces in the shop. I’m so proud of her skills and love seeing her pieces. You can visit her website to see her work. Then my mom, uncle and I headed down the street to the main building for the National Gallery of Victoria. I love educating myself and it was great to read tidbits of information as wandered around the premise. There was art work, sculptures as well as artifacts in the building from different countries and centuries.

I found a Monet, Sisley and Rhodin! I love impressionist paintings every since I went to France at 13 & 18 years old. The picture below is the Great Hall ceiling which was simply gorgeous.

As we were leaving the gallery we saw a guy setting up a living garden display. They were having a huge new exhibition called Melbourne Now launching on the weekend so both locations were busy with renovations.

We then set off down the promenade by the Yarra River so we could see more of the city. Despite the rain the landscape was still awesome to see. Melbourne has interesting artwork set up all over the city. Below on the left is one piece we saw along our walk.

Then I decided to drag my mom and uncle off to SeaLife Aquarium. I had just visited the new Toronto Aquarium so I felt like I was already an Aquarium aficionado. 

We definitely needed a selfie for Instagram beside the massive fish tanks! My mom was a good sport and joined in.

So both the Toronto Aquarium and Melbourne has this massive shark mouth for kid’s to take pictures inside. Since I never got to take a cheesy picture inside the shark mouth in Toronto my mom obliged me on this trip!

Something that wasn’t at the Toronto Aquarium was this massive crocodile seen below. He was definitely cool to see and I could’ve stared at him for hours.

We stopped for a necessary coffee stop mid visit and I stared out the window at the scenery.

Our last stop on the trip was to see the Penguins! First of all I yelled “happy feet!” when I saw them and wanted them to start tap dancing immediately! Second of all, I then stood in front of the pool part of the exhibit and watched them swim for hours (ok it was minutes).

It was a great first day in Melbourne!