Day 4 – Perth/King’s Park
The problem with many vacations is that they are so jammed full of scheduled activities there is no time to stop and smell the roses. Today we did just that, minus the roses.
We began with free wi-fi, a feature not as prominently advertised here as in the States. But after inquiring at a few breakfast places, we found a suitable place to chill and catch up on some “housekeeping.” We spent our morning at Pancake Jack’s, booking a future hostel, monitoring our bank accounts and so forth.
Now that we’ve been here a few days, Leo and I have wised up a bit. So instead of shelling out A$30 or a$40 for lunch, we found a grocery store and bought supplies for A$11. We then walked to the 1,000-acre King’s Park. The park overlooks the city and Swan River, providing a gorgeous setting for Australia’s native flora and fauna. We ate our lunch overlooking this vista.
Our timing is perfect; September is when the wildflowers bloom. We walked one of the “nature bushwalk” trails, where Leo snapped several photos of a cool plant called kangaroo paw.
We also walked across the park’s tree top walk bridge and spent some time lounging on a well-manicured grassy area reminiscent of an English park. (This was a British colony after all.) Some September festival is taking place, which means we were treated to a live band and lots of families running around.
Leo and I watched two guys kick a rugby ball around. The World Rugby Cup is taking place right now in New Zealand and there’s a lot of excitement around it. As we sat there watching these two guys kick the ball, shaped like a football, Leo commented that in the States, they’d be playing catch. Throwing a baseball around is the quintessential park activity there. Here, chasing after this oddly shaped ball is the ticket.
And yet as I watched the families picnic on the grass, I couldn’t help but feel, once again, as though the strings tying humanity together are short indeed, even 10,000 miles away.
