Day 291: Killing Time

With the delay in leaving Jakarta I didn't get into Melbourne until sometime around noon. I'd heard from the first person I was planning on staying with that she was busy for the day so I agreed to come find her house at 8pm, leaving me with quite a bit of time before heading over. The only public transportation from the airport to the city is by bus that costs $17, which seems pretty extreme after having spent the last few months paying a couple of dollars for 4 or 5 hour bus rides. The weather was very cool compared to what I had been expecting, but I still didn't want to carry around all my bags while I waited so I stored them in a locker at one of the central train stations and explored town on foot.

I planned to save the street art hunting for later in the week, but it's impossible to miss entirely because there's so much of it everywhere. The central public space in Melbourne, Federation Square, has an alley full of street art almost directly across from it, and is surrounded by some of the major arts buildings in the city.

I popped into the central tourist information office in the square to look for ideas of what to do while in town, then went to the National Gallery of Victoria for a couple hours. The NGV is split into two different buildings, and I only visited the Australian artist building which is right next to Federation Square.

Getting access to wifi proved to be a bit of a problem and I was having a hard time figuring out what exactly was going on for meeting up with the person I was planning to stay with. In the end I had to retrieve my bags from the train station and just hope the last I had heard about meeting around 8pm was still in effect. Between the directions I'd been given earlier and my tablet's GPS I took the train to the right neighborhood and walked until I got to the apartment. There was no answer at the door, and I wasn't really quite sure what to do from there. Luckily while I sat on the curb trying to decide what to do next my host's roommate showed up and explained that things were going to be running really late, but that she'd been asked to let me in and get me settled - so in the end everything worked out.