[Travelogue] Melbourne: Day 2 (3/3) | State Library of Victoria + Pidapipo | sillyandordinarygirl
By Lasmarya Hadi Purwanto - March 25, 2019
Here comes the last part of day 2!
After our trip to the Brighton Beach, we rode the train back to CBD by getting on the same Sandringham train heading to the City (Flinders Street) that took us around 23 minutes, and from the Flinders Street Railway Station, we found our way to State Library of Victoria.
There are two ways to reach the State Library from the Flinders Street Railway Station:
1. walk 1-2 min from Flinders St/State Route 30 towards St Kilda Rd/Swanston, turn left onto Swanston St and walk straight for 11-13 min to the library.
2. ride the Metro Train from Flinders Street Railway Station, take the metro heading to Hurstbridge, and get off after two stops at the Melbourne Central Railway Station. The Melbourne Central Railway Station is beneath the Melbourne Central shopping mall. From the mall, find your way to the exit on Swanston St, and you'll find the library right across.
Well, which way do you think we took? :E
The State Library of Victoria is located on a block framed by Swanston St, La Trobe St, Russell St, and Little Lonsdale St. We can enter the library from several entrances: Swanston St, La Trobe St (with accessible) and Russell St. As we came in from the Swanston St at the east side of the library, we were directly welcomed by the La Trobe Reading Room with this huge elegant dome on top of it.
The aerial view from above Swanston St
credit : wikimedia by Brian Jenkins
328 Swanston St, Melbourne VIC 3000 Australia
Open daily 10am-9pm
Admission: Free
Wifi available
We walked all the way across the reading room, and took the elevator to the balconies encircling the dome. We roamed through one level to another level of balconies, checking the "World of the Books" exhibition in the Dome Gallery level 4, where they display books in various forms from diverse era in different languages, including cuneiform from the Mesopotamian era, medieval manuscripts, to the smallest book ever produced. It was really fun, it felt like entering a mini book museum. :)
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As we finished encircling the level 4's exhibition, we continued to explore the level 5's Dome Gallery to the highest part (level 6) which is the Dome Viewing Balcony, where we were greeted by this stained glass artwork of William Shakespeare, which is also one of the earliest stained-glass windows made in Melbourne, and was first commissioned for the facade of the new Apollo Music Hall in Bourke Street, which opened in 1862.
Being established in 1854, the library itself is Australia's oldest public library, and one of the first free libraries in the world. It has a vast collection of over two million books, hundreds thousand of photographs, manuscripts, maps and newspapers, focusing specially on material from Victoria, including the diaries of Melbourne's founders.
So, if you scroll up, and check the map again, we actually didn't explore the other part of the building, which is the Cowen Gallery and the Redmond Barry Reading Room. Half of the excuse is because it was getting late and we were hungry, so we thought we needed to go out and find ourselves some food. The other half of the excuse is I guess, we didn't know that there's still more to see of the library, as our source of information about the library at that time was Instagram, and all the pictures that people tagged with the "state library of Victoria" were just this dome. So we thought 'okay, visiting the state library' ✔ (we could tick that off our itinerary)
We exited from the same Swanston St entrance, and I took a chance to snap this huge chess in front of the building.
The Nene Chicken was enough to fuel our energy back and we decided to take a stroll around the CBD area, window-shopping, and we ended up in the Degraves St where a Gelateria caught our attention. There's something about it that kept calling us (maybe it's our sugar craving!), and magically, we found ourselves inside the store already.
Here we were, in Pidapipo! More about Pidapipo Gelateria will be featured in the upcoming posts. I think maybe I need to dedicate a blog post only for it (still maybe), but I should give you a bit of a teaser, we're super glad that we ended the day with the gelato that was soooo good, we ordered the Pistachio and Dark Chocolate one btw, and I think it was one of the best impromptu decision we made during our trip in Melbourne. XD
xoxo
sillyandordinarygirl
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