Friday, 9/12 - Melbourne

Day 3

Today was spent walking around the Botanic Garden, the Shrine of Remembrance (WWI Memorial), and eventually the Yarra River and Federation Square, which made for some good pictures after it got dark.

I went back to the house for a while for dinner, a long nap, and some Flight of the Concords while I waited for Rebecca to call and tell me where to meet her. Things were tricky at this stage with communication.. I still wasn't entirely sure how to instruct her to call my American cell number, which I was trying to avoid anyway due to the hefty charges. She didn't call the house phone til around 10ish, after which I called her again from a payphone to rendezvous at the train station. Eventually we found each other and headed over to a bar called Purple Emerald, which was a pretty nice looking place with dim reddish lighting, comfy couches, and a live funk-type band. Her friends were all very nice to me. Among other things we discussed music, American/Australian politics, and cool stuff to do in Melbourne. Shockingly, my first visit to a real Aussie nightclub and I managed to get hit on twice throughout the night. The first was some douche who apparently took a class on how to pick up women, using the brand new pickup line/conversation starter of asking Rebecca and I whether we thought intuition is primal or learned. Being fairly caught off guard and the naive foreigner that I was, and not used to getting hit on in bars, I tried to be polite, not knowing any other way. Rebecca didn't even humor them as the guy's reputation as a pickup artist in training had preceded him. The second guy was simply drunk and immediately after introducing himself, asked how old I was and if it was weird that he was 37. After some mild pleasantries on my part, I pretended to not hear him every time he tried to get my attention from the next couch over.
We wound up staying out til about 3 and were among the last to leave before closing. Of course I was ready to pass out long before.