As we left the metro in downtown Perth we were greeted by a military band who was playing “Let me entertain you” with a really cool performance.

But that was not the only good impression of the city. Another highlight is King’s Park, located on the river side and slightly elevated (242 steps lead to the park). The park is huge and full of trees and plants from all over Australia. There was even one tree, about 750 years old, that has travelled all the way from the north of Western Australia (more than 3000km). It doesn’t have any leaves, but it seems to be growing.

For dinner we went to Annalakshmi, an Indian restaurant right at the river docks. It wasn’t only delicious, but also for free! Lunch and dinner are offered every day of the week, except Mondays. They do it based on donations – you can pay as much as you like when you leave the restaurant.

Once more we were lucky and there was a free music festival that day in Northbridge (a district of Perth), the “Saturday Spectacular” with young bands from Western Australia. There were quite a few spectators due to the great quality of music. Then we wanted to enjoy a cold beer with the music. However, it seems to be forbidden to drink in public as there were plenty of food stalls but none for drinks. Instead we had to invest in two scoops of Ben&Jerry’s ice cream.

The next day we set off to explore Fremantle, or Freo as they call it here. We had a look at the Fremantle prison, a world heritage site, which was in operation until 1991. The Shipwreck Galleries were also interesting. They had several artifacts from sunken ships (also coins from Hamburg) and a piece of the famous merchant ship Batavia on display. The rest of the day we spent watching parades, street artists and people drawing on the streets.