This week was my university’s week 6 study break. Now I’m not actually taking any courses this term, but I did want to make the use of cheap airfares, escape from the Sydney rain, and make an excuse to travel and sight-see

Airport Shenanigans

As usual I got stopped by customs, and also my bag got flagged for scanning 🔥

Travel With Me

HAH JOKES FLIGHT DELAYED BY 1.5 HOURS.
Better find somewhere to sit down…

Bought some food in case I got hungry during the flight.
EDIT: I ended up eating the food the next day at 4AM :')

Travel With Me

Did you know that Virgin has on-board WiFi? No, not internet, just an internal content server so that you can watch some preloaded movies, music, e-books, etc…
That said the videos didn’t work; probably some license issue on their end.

I spent the majority of the flight poking through the content server

I found the flight tracker pretty cool!

Touchdown

And we’re here!

Usually when I’m in Melbourne, I travel around via taxi / Uber / someone else driving; but since this isn’t actually a work trip (I just decided to travel for fun) I don’t get my travels expensed.
So public transport it is! In the Virgin Airline terminal, the top up / vending station for the PTV myki cards are far left of the terminal (facing the street), near the toilets.

FYI The myki card has a $6 fee - that said; Melbourne has free trams around CBD so technically I don’t need it.

That said, I travelled to the CBD via the SkyBus, because I had already lost 1.5 hours due to the flight delay.

Accommodation

I stayed at the Oaks Melbourne on William Street hotel, with the Studio Park room.
Though a 4.5 star hotel, I didn’t really see that many luxury services as compared to a 3-star hotel.
Swimming pool? Lounge? Valet? Complimentary water bottle? The concierge was available 24/7 though!

I’d give the accommodation a 3.5/5

poor power cable

Tripod Tripod Tripod

So whilst packing, I realised I didn’t have a travel tripod.
All my tripods are either too big, too heavy, and overall just aren’t suitable as a compact tripod.

So I headed over to Ted’s Cameras and purchased a Manfrotto MK Compact w/ Joystick head.
At minimum length it’s around 43cm, and only slightly protrudes past the length of my bag.

That said, I didn’t have the best customer service experience.
About 25 minutes of browsing (trying the different tripods), still no one had come to ask me if I was in need of anything.

Anyhow, the tripod comes with a pretty lightweight QR plate; I had packed a spare Arca-Swiss QR adapter to work with my PeakDesign Dual Plate on the camera, and my 70-200mm’s Arca tripod collar.
Quite thankfully the ball-head held up with the 2.1kg payload!

Sightseeing (Day)

To The Beach!

I spent my second day at Williamstown. As it’s not part of the CBD, I’d need to catch the train (finally getting to use my myki card!)

I gotta say, Sydney Trains are much nicer.
We have several layers, the colours aren’t weird tungsten lights, and our announcer speakers work (most of the time).
Melbourne’s station displays are more upfront though instead of our scrolling text - though I’d imagine the small text be difficult to read from a distance.