Today turned out to be a pretty full day in the city. I met an American co-worker at her apartment in Docklands. It is a nice area that all the other Americans I work with live in. Of course I took some pictures before we headed out. I have to say, she has a pretty nice view from her apartment.
Our plan for the day was to walk to St. Michaels Church in the Central Business District (CBD). She attends this church often and asked earlier in the week if I wanted to attend. The church is absolutely beautiful and the service was different than any I have attended before in the US. The priest has a degree in psychology and gives very interesting sermons. His sermon was on imagination and was very thought provoking. We sang several songs throughout the service that were reminiscent of the holidays, but they were not the Christmas carols I am used to in the States.
After the service, we walked down to Federation Square which I had only driven past before. The square was smaller than I imagined and I found it hard to believe that Oprah, her 300 audience members and the thousands of fans were in that square only 2 days ago. We decided to eat at a little Italian cafe in the square and sat down outside at a table in the sun. The wind was blowing a bit, causing it to be cold, so we decided to sit inside instead. Maybe 10 minutes later it started pouring, even though it was not supposed to rain (according to the weather page I checked in the morning). We enjoyed our lunch and decided to wait a little while for the rain to slow down or stop.
It did slow down, but didn't stop, so we changed our plans slightly. Instead of walking to the Queen Victoria Market as planned, we took the City Circle (free) tram to get there. The stop we got off at was in front of the Flagstaff Gardens. As we were walking by the park, a man stopped us and asked if we had a mobile he could use because his was dead. He told us that as he and his wife we driving by, they saw a dog in a car with all the windows up and were worried that the dog could die from the heat as the sun was starting to come out. Jeannie let him use her phone and he called the police. As he was calling we were looking at the car and observed that the front and back license plates did not match, nor did either of them match the registration sticker in the front window. The whole situation seemed sketchy (or dodgy as they say here). We waited for quite a while for the police to arrive and asked what they were going to do. They said they would try to contact the owner and if unable to locate the owner, they would open the vehicle to get the dog out and take it to a local shelter. Before we left, the couple who stopped us (or rather the husband) insisted that my coworker and I have our picture taken with the police, even though we insisted it was not necessary. The police were good sports about it though, as you can see below.
About 15 minutes later, we finally made it to the market where Jeannie needed to buy a dress for a New Year's Eve party that she is attending. It is a themed party, so she needs a Chinese style of dress and wanted one with a mandarin collar. While she was trying on dresses and deciding, I looked around and ended up purchasing an outfit as well. :) Once that was done, we had one more place to go. I needed to get some souvenirs in an area called Harbourtown, which is near her apartment in Docklands. We took the City Circle tram over to Harbourtown and went to the souvenir shop. As we were shopping, it started to rain again, so we went next door to a coffee shop and had a drink while waiting out the rain.
After all that, I finally headed for home. When I left for the day, my plan for the evening was to take a tram into the city to a cinema to watch the new Harry Potter movie. Needless to say, it didn't happen.
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