I think I’m going to add two days into one entry. Yesterday was a big walk around the city and today was a bus and train ride to Adelaide, so although each had some interesting points nothing really stood out as being a big event.

I started kind of late in the morning yesterday. I knew that it was going to be my last day and I didn’t really know what to do that I hadn’t already done in my time here. Well, there was one thing, I hadn’t gone to the beach in Melbourne yet and it was one of the first things I was planning on doing. So what better excursion to do before I left Melbourne than to go down to the shore? I decided to walk the long route to the nearest beach, about 5k by my estimations. I didn’t really know what to expect either, was it a regular beach for swimming, or possibly it could be a working shore that would be complete with docks.

When I did finally arrive about an hour after leaving the hotel, I entered into a very nicely groomed beach. The white sand beaches were filled with all types, there were people kite surfing, swimming, laying out, and of course lots and lots of people just walking around. About the only negative that I could find was that it was windy to the point of being a little uncomfortable.

After walking along the beach for what was marked as 5.5 km, I headed back to the city on a bike/pedestrian path. This path couldn’t have been planned out any better, it ran parallel to a park on one side and metro track on the other so the only time that I had to deal with any cars was the occasional cross street. Much of the path was covered by trees so it seemed really idyllic in fact I wish all cities, or at least Dubai, had paths like this. The walk back to the city pretty much wore me out and after hitting a downtown, Hungry Jacks, I took the metro back to the hotel. Just to note, Burger King ran into a copyright problem when they tried to come to Australia and had to use a different name, Hungry Jacks.

Something else that I keep telling myself that I need to mention in this blog is, that most of what I’ve seen of Australia, specifically where people are involved, reminds me so much like the west coast of the US. I swear there have been times like on my walk home yesterday that I felt like I was walking near Laurelhurst Park. The streets, the architecture, the parking, and nearly everything seemed so familiar.

I set both of my alarms for 6 to get out of the hotel by 7, and without a hitch I got to the train station on time. I like when that happens. About the only thing to note in my morning was that sometime over the night I developed an eye infection. It wasn’t bad at first, but by about midway through my trip I couldn’t even open my eye without tears streaming down my face. The guy sitting next to me kept looking at me, probably thought I was crying or something. Eventually we spoke a little and I took the opportunity to mention the eye infection and he nodded like now it made sense.

The type of eye infection is the same type as I usually get, I don’t know what causes it, but it seems to be common after being in strong wind where fine dust or sand is around. It happens a lot in Dubai. Another thing that I feel like kind of talking about is that on the second part of my journey we were on a bus, and there was a short, round, old man sitting across the aisle from me. He was the type that would talk to anyone and when he talked he didn’t care who heard. For the most part his voice just turned into background noise, much like the din of all the other noises of the bus, but at one point he says, “…I’ve been all around the world and I like all countries except for one.” He piqued my interest, which could it be? Russia? Japan? China? He continued, “America. The people are crazy there, they want war, and every one of them has a gun. And if it weren’t for America there wouldn’t be any wars. Just look, every war that there has been, America has been in it.” I was being given a rare inside look of what so many Australians think about the US. He didn’t know that I was from the US but I was smiling at that point. He mentioned, “I lived there for two months so I know what I’m talking about. At the time my wife was pregnant and she got nervous, so we got right out of there and came back to Australia!” I thought about breaking down his logic to him, like mentioning that the time frame he’s talking about is over 50 years ago (he mentioned that his daughter is 52), or that most of the wars the US has been in have been either at the request of other nations, WWI, WWII, Kuwait, and a number of other encounters. Sure, there are the ones that we’ve done wrong, Iraq, Vietnam, Afghanistan, but not every war. The whole time that I overheard his rant about how evil the US is/was, I just kept thinking how ignorance is like a warm blanket that people love to cover themselves in. He was so content in his belief that America was evil, he used the cause of wars to rationalize his theory, and now he could hate it without ever having to question his own beliefs. He is a perfect example of why I hate ignorance in everyone. In two months in Los Angeles and we’re all supposed to believe his hate of another group of people, who are so much like him that he couldn’t even tell an American(aka one of the demons) was sitting less than 4 feet away. To be honest though, I really enjoyed the opportunity that he gave me and only wish that I had said something to him… you know to let him hear my accent.

The bus pulled into Adelaide at about 730 in the evening and no lie, the city looked deserted. If it weren’t for an occasional car it would have looked like marshal law or a curfew was in effect. I made it to the hostel without any problems, and about the only thing that I can mention is that my eye was so swollen, red, and watery that I was embarrassed to talk to anyone. Earlier in the day I kept my sunglasses on so my eye was somewhat hidden, now that the sun was pretty much down my sunglasses aren’t really an option and my eye is out there to creep everyone out that happens to look at me. I quickly grabbed something to eat and headed to bed. It was about 9:30 when I laid my head down, and that is about the last thing I remember. It is somewhat interesting to me that I slept nearly half the trip to Adelaide asleep and then fell asleep at night before 10 on New Years Eve. Must have been the eye infection.