Melbourne

On Mon 9th May, after getting our tickets for our onward travels sorted, we all headed into the city centre where some of us were staying at Base Backpackers and others were staying at Wake Up Hostel. It was awful carrying my backpack after 2 weeks of just staying in one place, and we did all get a little bit lost and missed our stop on the bus so had to walk even further to our hostels! I packed my hand luggage bag ready for Melbourne and walked to Mitika's new flat to leave my main rucksack at her place whilst I'm in Melbourne. We then went over to Sidebar which is a bar located under Wake Up Hostel so I met up with all the other OzIntro guys and we had a good last night together! Stayed out a lot later than I wanted to!

The next morning I checked out of Base and my friend Kate from OzIntro wanted to check into my room as that's where Rohan and Helen were staying too so I waited until she got there so that she could take over my bed. Unfortunately, whilst I was waiting for her the strap on my hand luggage bag broke! So we went straight to a shopping centre to try and get a new bag but no luck there, and Paddy's market is not on Tuesdays so I couldn't go there either. So I just had to be careful holding it by one strap only. I said bye to Kate and took the airport shuttle to Sydney Kingsford Smith Airport. Was annoyed to see my flight was cancelled though due to "aircraft problems"! So I had to wait 4 hrs at the airport for the next flight out, and sadly I left my laptop and all my books at Mitika's for the week, but I kept busy by writing some postcards.

When I arrived in Melbourne I checked into Hotel Discovery and my friends Carmen and Lauren picked me up so we could go out to dinner. Had a lovely meal at Huckstables, and it was so nice to catch up with them.

Wednesday 11th  - Melbourne is not as big as Sydney so I thought it would be best to walk around to find my bearings. I started off at the Queen Victoria markets which are famous in Melbourne - it was cool to walk around it as it had so many stalls. I then walked over to Melbourne Central shopping centre, and then down Swanston Street to Federation Square, where I took the free tourist shuttle around the city. It took an hour and a half to go around but it was raining outside so I was glad to be warm! Then I had a look around some shops and shopping centres including Australia on Collins. Then it was a quiet night in as I was so tired from the last few days.

Thursday 12th - I took the free city circle tram around the city, went to Harbour Town shopping outlet centre where I got a good hand luggage bag with wheels. In the evening, I went to the Crown Plaza and Entertainment Complex. This is the largest casino in the Southern Hemisphere. It was huge! There was a cinema, tons of shops and restaurants inside the complex, so I treated myself to a nice Italian meal and played one of the slot machines. Would have loved to try to play one of the bigger games like Blackjack, Roulette or Craps but it looked really confusing and Blackjack didn't seem to have the standard Vegas 21 rules that I know so I left it - it was nice to watch though.

Friday 13th -  I did the Neighbours tour in the morning. Haven't watched Neighbours since I was 15 but I figured I have to do it whilst I'm in Melbourne!

It was really cheesy. The driver was an Irish man who knew EVERYTHING about neighbours! He talked so quickly and went on endlessly about some of the flaws in Neighbours like the way certain characters come back to life or the stupidness of some of the storylines! He put on a BBC3 documentary on Neighbours ont he coach and said we're not supposed to be learning anything on this tour - the main point of it was to get our facebook profile pictures haha! We drove to the set and took some photos but it wasn't very interesting for me as I didn't know  Then we were driven to the Cul-de-sac which is used for filming the Ramsey Street scenes, and it was a tiny street with 6 houses in it. The driver was trying to be funny and thought he would pretend to crash into the street, but he didn't realise there were roadworks going on in the corner of the entrance to the street so he actually did swerve and crash into the roadwork posts! It was hilarious! We then got out of the van, a car pulled up and out jumped Stingray from Neighbours! I would have been more excited if it was Toadie, Drew, Libby, Carl, Susan, Harold or Madge as I remember those characters but everyone else was really happy! We took some photos around the street with the "Ramsey Street" sign, and headed back into Melbourne, which is about an hour away. Afterwards, I went for a walk in teh Botanical gardens. It's meant to be one of the best botanical gardens in the world and although it was nice, I thought Singapore's botanical gardens which I went to a few weeks ago were much more beautiful with more to see. It was raining when I was walking around them, so perhaps that clouded my judgement. After the gardens I took a long walk up the "tan" which is a long stretch of pavement from the Botanic gardens back to the city centre. On Carmen’s recommendation I took a walk along Flinders Lane and Degraves Street and saw so many cute shops and cafes. In the evening, I met with the girls to go to my first ever Aussie Rules Football game! It was Collingwood vs Geelong, and was apparently quite a big deal so I was glad to be there. It was at the Melbourne Cricket Ground which is the 10^th largest sporting stadium in the world, there were 81,641 people in the stadium that night!

The match was really exciting and the atmosphere was great! My friend Carmen explained some of the rules to me and surprisingly I didn’t find it too hard to follow. There was an old woman behind us with a really young-sounding voice who kept screaming from the top of her lungs – “C’mon Mike!”, “You can do it Johnny!”- it was entertaining haha! As it was so cold, we went for hot chocolate afterwards at Chocolatierre San Churro. They specialize in Spanish hot chocolate and we got the “Hot and Cold” which is rich hot chocolate with a scoop of white chocolate ice cream in it -  yum!!

When I got to my dorm I met 2 girls who are studying in Sydney (Alex and Hodan). They were in Melbourne for a long weekend and funnily enough were returning to Sydney on the same flight as me on Tuesday!

Saturday 14^th – Today I took a walk along Federation Square and Southgate on South Bank which is full of restaurants and bars. I had a look at a few more shopping streets like Little Collins. Melbourne is so great for shopping I wish I had an empty suitcase and lots of money to spare!! I met Lauren, Carmen and her fiancé Bernie for dinner at a bar called Cookie. I don’t believe it’s the regular theme but for some reason the bartenders and waiters were all dressed in drag (?!) We then went for a drink at Sister Bella and finally a cocktail bar called “Berlin”. We had to queue up on a dark staircase with a picture of Adolf Hitler on the wall, and ring a doorbell to get in. When we were let in we were given a table on the East side of the wall. The West side was really pretty with candles and the East side looked quite dark and depressing. The cocktail menu was given to us on a mock plane ticket and the names of the cocktails were unusual like “Checkpoint Charlie” and “Dictator No. 2”. It was so unusual!

Sunday 15^th – Today was road trip day! Carmen and Lauren picked me up from my hostel and we drove to the Mornington Peninsula. We drove through Rosebud and stopped at a vintage market and then to Sorrento and had coffee at the Back Beach, in a café with a lovely view. We drove through Rye, had lunch in Dromana, and then other places we drove through were Mount Martha, Mornington, Arthur’s Seat and Redhill. We stopped at Murrays Point lookout where we saw sunshine rays through the clouds and it was so beautiful, yet bizarre because we’d not seen anything like it before. The picture below doesn’t do it justice because it really looked like a UFO or something beaming down lights from the sky!

Monday 16^th – Today I had a walk through the Brunswick and Smith street precincts which are areas similar to Camden – quirky shops, cafes and bars.  I met Carmen and Lauren in the evening for a hot cocktail at Madame Brussels. It looked like a cute English tearoom and they serve alcohol in teapots! We went for dinner in Chinatown at a Melbourne institution called Shanghai Village. After some yummy dumplings, I said goodbye to the girls and met the 2 girls from my hostel to explore the nightlife in Melbourne. We went to 5 bars that Carmen had recommended, and they were all great! Each had a different theme: the Rooftop was on a roof (surprisingly) and had nice views over the city; Toff in Town was a bar that had old-school train carriages inside and you can lock yourself inside compartments for privacy; the Croft Institute was themed as a science lab, with beakers and test tubes everywhere, stools and high tables with sinks that made you think you were in a classroom, and drinks were served with “syringes”! The 4^th place looked was called Double Happiness and had a communist theme apparently, but due to the other places we’d seen that night, I didn’t think it was that great, but it had a nice relaxed atmosphere. Finally we went next door to “The New Gold Mountain” – there was a sign on the door saying we had to call a phone number before we could be let in! When we got in it was so pretty inside and looked like a French Boudoir but there was no one else there apart from us so we left after a bit, but I can imagine on a Friday or Saturday it would be heaving.

Tuesday 17^th - after checking out, me Alex and Hodan went for a yummy hot chocolate (had to show them the Hot and Cold!) before heading to the airport for our flight back to Sydney.