Back in Melbourne

Sat 7^th January – I arrived in Melbourne at 8am. My friend Tasha (who I had last seen on Magnetic Island) had rung me the day before to arrange going out for breakfast as I couldn’t check in to my hostel until later. I went to her hostel in Collingwood to freshen up and then we went to Abbotsford Convent where there is a nice vegetarian/vegan café called Lentil As Anything. The food was amazing! Afterwards we lay on the grass outside the convent where I fell asleep and decided it was time I make my way to my own hostel. I was staying in St Kilda which is a beach suburb of Melbourne – it’s a cool area full of backpackers and my friend Helen had recommended the hostel “Habitat”. I had a nap and then went out to meet Helen and Ellie who had been in Melbourne a few days. We went out at the Base bar where my friend Laura worked as the bar manager. Laura did Ozintro the week after me and Helen and we had met up many times along the east coast. The last time I saw her was in Cairns in August so it was so cool to see her again after all this time!

Sun 8^th – Tues 10^th January – On Sunday I looked around St Kilda. There were markets on and I walked along the esplanade. On Monday I decided that as nice as St Kilda was I didn’t like being far from the city so I moved to a hostel in the city centre. I had a walk around the city and sorted out my onward travel which took some time. In the evening I met up with a girl called Sarah who was on my west coast tour from Darwin to Broome. We had a good catch up and went to watch some free comedy so that was a nice evening. On Tuesday I moved rooms as my first room was all boys, and they weren’t very talkative, but when I moved down the corridor my new room also had just boys! They were from Yorkshire and were friendly so after doing my laundry I spent the afternoon teaching them the card game ‘Shithead’ which to my surprise they’d never played before!

Weds 11^th January – I met my friend Will from my Ozintro group for coffee in the afternoon. It was nice to catch up as we hadn’t seen each other since Bundaberg! Afterwards I popped into Hlene’s work – she works at a cupcake shop lucky girl! When I got back to the hostel the boys from my room said they had been waiting around for me to play Shithead! They loved it the day before and when they couldn’t find me they went out and bought a pack of cards and had been playing it all day! In the evening I met up with my Australian friends Carmen and Lauren who I’d met up with a few times the first time I was in Melbourne. We went to a vegetarian restaurant in Carlton which is a really nice trendy area with lots of cafes and restaurants. In Melbourne you can never eat at the same place twice as there is so much to choose from – now I’ve added Carlton to my list of places to go.

Thurs 12^th January – For the last 2 months my phone’s screen would occasionally freeze. It went from doing it for a few minutes every couple of days, to almost 10 times every day, and whilst I was in Melbourne my phone spent more time frozen than unfrozen. I had enough today and decided to get a new phone, as I found out my old phone would cost $89 to fix! Hardly worth it for a 2 year old phone. So I spent the whole day in and out of phone shops. In the late afternoon I went to the gym as I had a free day pass and it felt so good to work out after almost 9 months! After the gym I went back to one of the phone shops and bought a new phone! It’s a dual SIM phone so I have both my Australian and UK SIM card in the phone at the same time, so I can receive messages on both which is handy. When I got back to the hostel they were doing a pub crawl so I joined it for an hour, and then left them to meet my friend Vicky. We re-created the bar crawl I did the first time I was in Melbourne and I took them to all the cool places my friends Carmen and Lauren had told me about. We didn’t get to go to the Berlin bar this time though because it was shut but I did learn of a new place called “Lily Black’s” which was lovely.

Fri 13^th January – As I got in quite late last night I had a lie in, and then looked around the shops. I went to the Australian Centre for the Moving Image (ACMI) as I had been told it’s really good. I didn’t go there the first time I was in Melbourne as it didn’t appeal to me, but I’m glad I went this time. I spent hours in there. It was a centre with a museum that had exhibits on the development and advancement of cinema and television. It had lots of interactive exhibits where you could play video games, make a flip book, and learn how they did the slow motion action scenes in the Matrix. They also had a media room where you could sit on couches in front of individual TV’s and watch documentaries and short films made by that have been shown in Australian film festivals. In the evening I was set for having a night in but my roommates had people round, and before I knew it I was joining in and went out with all of them! I was convinced when they said they were going to the Berlin bar and I really wanted to see it again.

Sat 14^th January – I met Helen for lunch today and we went out for Chinese food. I’d been told by Vicky and a couple of other people that tennis was free to watch today. The Australian Open was starting on Monday 16^th so they had opened up the Rod Laver Arena at the MCG for the weekend to allow people to watch the qualifications.

We took the free tourist shuttle over and spent a couple of hours there. My friend Tasha met us at the arena and we watched quite a few different games as it was all open and people were free to walk in and out of courts as they pleased. It wasn’t too busy today considering it was free, but I guess most people had bought tickets to watch the ‘real’ events. Me and Helen also bumped into a girl we stayed in a hostel with in Brisbane so that was strange! Afterwards we spent 20 minutes waiting for the tourist shuttle back to the CBD (Central Business District), and then felt stupid because the sign said the last one left an hour before! So we walked back in the cold (yes Melbourne was quite cold for summer) and I went back to my hostel for a few hours to pack for my trip the next day. Just before sunset I went to the Eureka 88 Skydeck.

This is the highest viewpoint in Melbourne and it has an attraction called “The Edge” where you can opt to go in a small glass cubicle which protrudes out of the building leaving you with a view of the city through the glass floor. This was really cool. We had to put slippers on over our shoes to stop the floor getting scratched and when we went in the windows and floor were fogged up. We moved for a few seconds away from the main building and then the windows and floor defogged. As it was just after sunset the city looked really beautiful. It was a shame we weren’t allowed to take photos (even though some people snuck their cameras in). The experience lasted 5 minutes, during which time we all took turns to have our photo taken at one end of the cubicle by the Edge Photographer. If you weren’t having your photo taken you had to stand against the opposite wall to avoid getting in the shot. The problem was that when I looked at the photos in the gift shop, I could see the reflections of everyone in the glass behind me, rather than the city skyline! The time of day could have been a factor in this as the photos I took with my own camera on the skydeck also had reflections in them. Still, it was a lovely end to my 2^nd trip in Melbourne.