{"id":21820,"date":"2016-06-18T18:10:24","date_gmt":"2016-06-18T10:10:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/?p=21820"},"modified":"2018-04-03T16:02:06","modified_gmt":"2018-04-03T08:02:06","slug":"melbourne-day-6-melbourne-museum-gardens-and-st-patricks-cathedral","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/2016\/06\/18\/melbourne-day-6-melbourne-museum-gardens-and-st-patricks-cathedral\/","title":{"rendered":"Melbourne – Day 6 – Melbourne Museum, Gardens and St. Patrick’s Cathedral"},"content":{"rendered":"

According to our planned itinerary, Day 6 was to be our Gardens and Museums day where we’d visit the Melbourne Museum, Royal Exhibition Building, Cook’s Cottage, Carlton, Parliament, Treasury and Fitzory Gardens and finally St. Patrick’s Cathedral. Lots of walking involved. Possibly because of the super long day on the road at the Great Ocean Road trip yesterday, both Ling and the kids were still a little tired today, and the weather was slightly rainy, chilly with an ongoing wind and all round fierce overcast. We dropped several items from the itinerary – sticking with just the Melbourne Museum, Carlton, Parliament and Treasury Gardens, and finishing with St. Patrick’s Cathedral before heading back to the retail district around Melbourne Central.<\/p>\n

The Melbourne Museum<\/strong> doesn’t disappoint. It’s a pretty large compound and set in modern architecture – since it’s current location is a pretty new building that opened in 2001 – and comprises several large exhibits. We visited perhaps about 2\/3s of the permanent exhibits over 3 hours before the kids got a little tired (Peter had already dozed off in his stroller), and that included the Science and Life Gallery that featured several overhanging large dinosaur skeletons and many other prehistoric findings, Mind and Body Gallery (Ling remarked that this exhibit is a lot better done up and informative compared to Singapore Science Museum), Forest Gallery (this one is too small and rather underwhelming), Evolution Gallery, and finally a special exhibition on World War I as seen from the Australian perspective. The latter was sobering, with lots of letters, photos and artifacts from Australian soldiers who served in the Great War, many of whom perished in the war.<\/p>\n

There was another special exhibition on Jurassic World that required a hefty additional admission charge, so we gave that a miss.<\/p>\n

The place is also wheelchair and stroller friendly. In fact, possibly because it was both a weekend and also that school exams had just concluded, the place saw long queues at the ticket booth waiting for entry. The ground floor also has several children play areas. Again, a very nice touch in several places we’ve visited in Melbourne.<\/p>\n

Admission fee is AUD14 for adults and free for kids. Definitely worth the price of admission, and 3 hrs won’t be enough for one to really visit all the exhibits, let alone the special ones.<\/p>\n

St. Patrick’s Cathedral<\/strong> has a Gothic-styled architecture, and it shows that clearly in its dark stone work. Unlike St. Paul’s Cathedral, this one was bereft of photography donations nor a souvenir shop and saw only a small handful of visitors, and we stayed for a short while to be immersed in the ambiance – though when we about to leave, a bus load of what sounded like Singaporean tourists on a package tour entered and serenity ended there and then.<\/p>\n

\"Carlton
Carlton Gardens leading to the Royal Exhibition Building and the Melbourne Museum.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"The
The rain had stopped but the ground was still very wet.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"A
A glass mirror pyramid for kids to crawl into.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"The
The Science and Life Gallery.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"The
The Royal Exhibition Building.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"St.
St. Patrick’s Cathedral as seen from the junction of Macarthur and Albert Streets.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Inside
Inside St. Patrick’s Cathedral.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Stained
Stained glass windows in the Cathedral.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Entrance
Entrance to Treasury Gardens from Spring Street.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Very
Very serene Treasury Gardens at about 1400 hrs. The kids were quite tired though so we had to skip Fizroy Gardens just beyond it.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

According to our planned itinerary, Day 6 was to be our Gardens and Museums day where we’d visit the Melbourne Museum, Royal Exhibition Building, Cook’s Cottage, Carlton, Parliament, Treasury and Fitzory Gardens and finally St. Patrick’s Cathedral. Lots of walking<\/p>\n

Read More Melbourne – Day 6 – Melbourne Museum, Gardens and St. Patrick’s Cathedral<\/span><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":21821,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[573,609,575,567,568,566],"class_list":["post-21820","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-traveling","tag-fujifilm-x70","tag-m4-3","tag-melbourne-2016","tag-12-40mm","tag-40-150mm","tag-e-m1","wpcat-17-id"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/blog-2016-melbourne-day6-OMEC1232-carlton-gardens.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21820","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21820"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21820\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21821"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21820"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21820"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21820"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}