Coker’s Travels (and Travails)

Travel to Egypt

When they say, “Don’t drink the water.”  I learned that you don’t brush your teeth with it as well. This untold story involves the Pyramids of Giza, the Sahara Desert,  Cairo, Sofatel Hotel, a bus, no rest areas, a few chapters of a Stephen King book, Phil Mott, and a bus load full of surprised sailors.

That about sums it up.

Texans Loose In Melbourne

Having a free day in Melbourne meant we would have to leave the extraordinary comfort of the Crown Towers and embark upon a journey into the heart of the city. With recent memories of trips to Chicago, New York, and our closest big city, Houston, we thought that there would not be much difference in visiting another metropolis filled with over 3 million residents.

Nisha plans out our route via the Melbourne bus schedule.

Melbourne would soon prove as wrong, just as we discovered a few days earlier in Sydney. Our day started with a visit to the Crown concierge who directed us to the City Circle Tram, a short walk from the hotel across the Yarra River. It was not long before we found the station and boarded an electric tram reminiscent of the trolley cars of San Francisco. As we studied our route on the map given to us by the concierge, we saw that this tram circles although it appears to be a square in shape the city and allows you to get off and on as necessary to cover all of the gardens, cathedrals and sports faculties in Melbourne. Although Melbourne appears to be a very different city architecturally than Sydney, it consists of the same Australian blend of international and domestic diversity. Everyone is particularly friendly and eager to sort out any details that a traveler might find confusing or out of the ordinary.

One of the most spectacular sights we toured today was the St. Patrick’s Cathedral on Nicholson Street. The Gothic Revival exterior creates a sense of awe inspiring wonder and is only rivaled in beauty by its interior, whose soaring ceilings and immense spans of stained glass leave you utterly speechless. It is apparent that Melbourne is a city where contrasts are the norm and not the exception, sitting alongside spectacular examples of architecture from two centuries ago, exist contemporary buildings that blur the edge of art and the status quo. Most notably of these were the Southern Cross Station with its aluminum roof that appears to be a shining sea of rolling waves and the Melbourne Exhibition Center located on the Yarra River adjacent to the Crown Towers megaplex.

The scene inside our chariot.

We found on our short trip around the city today and similarly in Sydney, there is a plentiful supply of gardens and parks surrounding the city with one always seemingly being just around the corner. It seems as though these cities have gotten it right with its mixture of business and pleasure. The residents seem to take full advantage of the green space as the garden are full of young and old alike.

As we completed our loop around the city, we decided to walk the last leg of the journey, from Federation Square to Market Street. The streets were swelled with pedestrians, most surely due to the Australian Open at the nearby National Tennis Centre. We had lost track of the time and realized that a bite to eat was in order, not a problem here in Melbourne as there is a plethora of dining options available everywhere. We quickly found a nice cafe located at the intersection fronting the Flinders Street Train Station, a perfect place for people watching and enjoying a filling meal of fish and chips. As with the architecture, the people of Melbourne are a wonderful blend of old and young, vintage and contemporary, existing together between the spires of the concrete and steel.

We made it back to the Crown Towers and downloaded all of the pictures we took from our short trip around the city. I uploaded my images to Tennis Channel’s FTP site set up for me prior to embarking on our Aussie Mania Sweepstakes trip.

I can only hope that one day there will be an “experience” feature programmed into our cameras that passes along to the viewer what it was like to be there, to be in the space occupied by the subjects of our photography. Only then could you appreciate what we saw previously in Sydney and now in the wonderful city of Melbourne.