Eureka ! Standing on glass 285m above the ground.

Photo: One of the massive halls in the NGV building.

Photo: The Eureka building.

Hello hello, I started the day off quite late. An unexpected problem is that my knees are becoming wrecked. I should be careful with my *kruisbanden*. I estimate that I must have been walking for about 20 km per day, 22 days on a row now ... So we take it easy the coming days.

By lunch time I arrived at the cafetaria of the NGV, the National art Gallery of Victoria. During the lunch I got into a conversation with a lady who had lived in London for 5 years. She and her husband even invited me to stay over at the countryside that afternoon and night, but the timing was a bit bad because her children were coming over to spend holidays. Anyway, I got their contact info if I return here... Australian people are really really nice ! And another lady passed her journal to me also ...

The NGV building is quite amazing architecture. There are glass walls with water running over it, and the size of the building is gigantic. Although they are no match for Europe's galleries, they have quite a fine art collection.

In the late afternoon I go to the highest building in the southern hemisphere: The Eureka building. Some facts: it's over 300 meters (I should look up how tall exactly), 450 people worked on it daily to build it, it swings up to 3 meters at the top, it has 40 000 square meters of glass of which some is gold plated at the top. A massive water tank at the top keeps it into balance... The lift which travels at 9 m/s takes us to the 88th floor in just about 35 seconds. A nice tourist attraction is the Edge. Basically you enter a clear glass cube together with 7 other people, and they roll the thing outside the building 285 meter above ground level. Well, it is a bit of an adrenaline shot :-)