Big Mel

Okay, no luck uploading pictures, so you're all just going to have to use your imagination coupled with my italicized descriptions to fill in the obvious lack of pictures in this post

Melbourne is Austrlia's New York: big, bold and hectic. Just check out the skyline:

Imagine a huge, New York-ish skyline stretching out before you. The photographer appears to be floating in the middle of a bay, and, in fact, he is, the picture having been taken while he was on the ferry to Tasmania.

This is Eureka Tower, my favourite of the highrises:

This a particularly impressive high-rise with weird, jutting angles and an unintuitive reverse-pyramid thing going on at the top. Also, the tower stretches diagonally across the picture.

And nestled within a shopping mall in downtown Melbourne, a cool old Shot Tower (this is where they used to make lead pellets for ammunition by dropping beads of molten lead from the top of the tower and allowing them to cool into little solid spheres as they fell).

What's this? A large stone tower stretching high above covered by a large steel and glass enclosure. Another slanty picture.

But enough of my slanty pictures, how about a cool pedestrian bridge?

A small bridge with 2 arches.

Now I'm sure you've all realized that Melbourne is rather large (I subtlely hinted at it's size in my post title), but how does one get around in such a large city? Well, you take the tram of course!

Hey, check out that old school tram. That shot must have required precision timing to capture the tram in full as it went whizzing by.

Melbourne has a fantastic, quasi-free tram service that goes all over the city. It's a fun ride, but don't expect to sit down, everyone who's anyone (and even people who aren't) drive around on the tram. Still, it beats trying to drive in this city, which is something you should never try.