Easter Sunday. A day that I normally spend in a little church atop Snake Alley in Burlington, Iowa with all of my family, listening to Ben's love, Judy Ann, ending with a lovely photo of everyone out front (if we can get everyone to cooperate...) But this year was obviously different. Both Katie and I thought it was important to make it to church on Easter Sunday, so she found a cathedral about two blocks away from our hostel for us to go to. Although neither of us are Catholic, the church was, so we were already out of our element. Things got even stranger when we realised the minister/pastor/priest was Oriental, meaning he had a very strong Oriental accent. This meant that we were going to have to sit for an hour and a half in a church that wasn't either of our religions, in a foreign country, while not being able to understand what was being said. Needless to say, it was an experience.
Here are some photos so you can get a feel of what the hostel was like. First is the entry to the bar/cafe attached to the hostel. Next to that, is one of the four kitchen areas, then the "living room" area that had a tv, chairs, couches, and a pool table, as you can see. There's Katie walking down the hallway, looking mighty spiffy in her Easter dress. And the last picture is our room. There was another bunk bed behind me, as well as our storage areas. Katie had top bunk and I had bottom bunk, and our suitcases lived underneath the bed.
After church that day, the plan was to walk to King's Park, a huge nature park with all sorts of Australian flora and fauna. So we set off in the direction we thought King's Park was in...only to realise 30 minutes later, that we had walked the opposite way. Although at first we were frustrated, we figured we could take this mishap to our advantage and see more of Perth that we wouldn't have made an effort to see otherwise.
We saw the Western Australia Cricket Association cricket stadium, which was called Prindeville Stand (I'm related to some Prindevilles...maybe I'm actually famous in WA). And we also saw this really creepy yet totally gnarly cemetery.
The first of three gardens that we saw that day was Queens Gardens. It was a nice little area of nature inside the city where people could go picnic and spend time in the outdoors (if you can call a park surrounded by skyscrapers "outdoors").
(P.S. To those who want to know, bird's of paradise are my absolute favourite flowers in the whole wide world...)
Move over Natalie Portman, the real Black Swan has arrived.
This statue was particularly intriguing. It was a statue of Peter Pan playing his flute, surrounded by fairies. I thought that all the girls surrounding him were fairies, until I noticed that the one right at the top didn't have wings. I suspect that she is Wendy, but I'm sure that it's open for interpretation.
We made a pitstop at the Perth City Mint where we saw a ton of Aussie special edition coins including Aussie animals, superheroes, Doctor Who, and heaps more.
We stopped for lunch with my new friend, Roo, next to what apparently was the set of Jurassic Park.
Next was the Perth Bell Tower, which they claim is their "Big Ben," I couldn't see the comparison. The fence outside the Bell Tower was of more interest to me. Couples could get their names engraved on a padlock, lock it to the fence, and throw away the key. I always find these concepts interesting and wonder how many of these faceless names are still together.
Both Katie and I found the contrast of some of the older buildings to the tower buildings in the city to be quite amusing. And I always have found yarn bombing strangely beautiful.
After scaling the cliff that was Mount Street, we had finally arrived in King's Park.
King's Park is a 400 hectare park, with some of the most amazing views of the city. It is also a sacred ground for the native Aboriginal people of Australia. I took a particular interest in their stories of their culture and how they used the "Dreamtime Place" to describe how the Earth and everything on it came to be.
After spending the whole day walking, our feet were practically begging us to sit down. Me, being the genius that I am, had worn flip-flops the whole day. We can all agree that they aren't the best walking shoes that I could have worn. We were both starving as well, seeing as all we had eaten all day were peanut butter sandwiches, so we stopped at a kebab place which I was very, very apprehensive about. I ended up getting a chicken kebab with barbecue and tomato sauce. It was actually surprisingly enjoyable and I once again was proud of myself for "expanding my palette." After that, we made our way back to the hostel, exhausted, and then to McDonald's for ice cream and free wifi, only to find out that the ice cream machine was broken. We got slushies instead and I got to FaceTime with my family which made my entire day. I miss them more than words can describe and even though I didn't get to talk to or see all of them, I know that they know I was there with them and that they were here with me for both of our Easters. After getting back to the hostel, Katie and I, being too tired to write about our days in our journals, passed out.
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