Thursday:
Thursday was Anzac Day, an Australian holiday celebrating the service of military veterans. It's a really big deal. Though the US obviously has Veterans' Day, I feel like it isn't taken nearly as seriously as Anzac Day, and I wish it was. Anyways, Anzac Day is a public holiday, so we had off of school. Kristy, Michelle, Deb, and I decided to take this as an opportunity to take a long-weekend trip to Melbourne. Kristy and I flew on Tiger Airways to Melbourne, arriving in the city around 4:00 PM. We took the Skybus from the airport to Southern Cross Station and then walked from the station to out hostel, Nomad's, on A'Beckett St. We met up with Deb there and checked into our room. We were in an 8-person mixed room. Everyone else staying with us was super nice and friendly. That's the coolest part about backpacking, I find: everyone has such an interesting story of why they're there and where they're going. Kanga gave me a huge list of possible things to do in Melbourne, and one of them was to visit Lygon St. in Carlton, which is the Italian part of the city. So, we decided we'd have dinner there. We took a walk up and down the street and it reminded me a lot of Little Italy in NYC, except a lot of the restaurants owners weren't actually Italian. But, they ALL had the best Italian food on Lygon St. and they all offered us a "special deal" that if we ate there, we'd get a free glass of champagne. The restaurant we chose was Cosentino, which I didn't realize until after we sat down, but it's ironic because Cosentino is my aunt's maiden name. Anyways, we were able to get three pizzas, garlic bread, and a bottle of wine for $15 each, because they were trying to promote their new menu. It was awesome. The food wasn't superb, but it was adequate and a great deal. Afterwards, we went to a gelato shop that was out of this world. I got a scoop of tiramisu gelato and a scoop of pistachio gelato in a sugar cone. DELICIOUS. Then we walked around the city, went to Yarra River and Federation Square, listened to a number of street performers, including a saxophonist whom Kristy absolutely adored. We walked back to the hostel via this really cool bridge with glass panels on the sides. Each of the panels was labeled with a different country that has had immigrants come to Australia, including the years that groups of people came from those countries and what their purpose in immigrating was. Michelle's plane landed at 9:30 PM, so we went back to the hostel to meet up with her there, but she didn't arrive at Nomad's until 10:30ish. We explored the hostel together and then called it a night.
Friday:
We got a nice, early start at 8:30 AM and went to Queen Victoria Market. I'm not really in the habit of going to markets, but this one was super cool. I finished my souvenir shopping, bought myself an ice cube tray that makes koala, kangaroo, and AUS shaped ice cubes (I KNOW, RIGHT?!), and two beautiful scarves. Then we shopped through produce and the deli to get breakfast and lunch foods. I bought an apple, a couple bananas, a crusty roll, some almonds and dried cranberries, and some sopressa. All delicious things. We sat down and ate breakfast outside the market. By the way, on this day I was wearing a highlighter yellow t-shirt, bright blue pants, and my red TOMS. I was stylin'. After we finished eating, we dropped our purchases off at Nomad's and went to the Carlton Gardens, where we ended up going through the Melbourne Museum. It was pretty good, mostly because it was free, but they had some very cool taxidermy exhibits and dino bones. That stuff was cool. After the museum, we walked through the Gardens through the Greek Precinct and Chinatown. Greek wasn't much, not nearly as robust as Lygon St. but, Chinatown was super Chinatown, man. I mean, it wasn't people selling knock-offs, it was just a TON of Chinese and other Asian restaurants and souvenir shops. Crazy. Then, we walked to Federation Square and hung out there for a while. After that, we walked to the Eureka Building and went up to the Skydeck on the 88th floor. This is by far the tallest building in Melbourne and boats itself as the highest observation point in the Southern Hemisphere. The elevator ride up was insanely fast, something like 9 km/h. And the view was spectacular. We left Eureka and went to Flinders St. Station, where we got our tram cards so we could head out to St. Kilda. Now, I was told by three separate people that we needed to check out St. Kilda, which is a Melbourne suburb on the beach with apparently a great nightlife. But, we were mostly excited to see the Little Penguins who call St. Kilda Pier their home. There's an observation deck that you can go out onto and see the penguins swimming back home from their day on Phillip Island, around dusk. However, the deck was closed for construction and we couldn't get close at all to the penguins. By the time we started hearing them coming, it was way too dark to see them from the point we were at. But, we tried really hard. For dinner, we had no idea what to do, but I knew there had to be SOMETHING close because I had heard SO MUCH about St. Kilda. So, we just chose a direction and walked until we found a populated street. I don't even know the street we ended up on, but we passed the Melbourne Luna Park and turned right. We ended up eating at Santa Ana, which specializes in several types of Latin American cuisines. At this point, I hadn't really eaten a full meal all day, so I was very hungry. I ordered the taquitos guachos, which were corn tortillas filled with seasoned steak strips, caramelized onions, Chimmi Churri sauce and guacamole. And they were so delicious, besides the fact that there were two of them and they were two bites each. It was a relatively inexpensive meal, but I was still so hungry. We went across the street for dessert at San Churro Chocolateria, and let me please tell you how delicious this was. I wasn't about to spend $12 on 3 churros, I decided we'd just make churros someday, they're pretty easy. Instead, I bought a slice of Chocolate Coconut Truffle cake, which was layers of chocolate cake and coconut truffle mousse, topped with chocolate ganache and a chocolate coconut truffle. By golly, was I finally full after that! It was absolutely scrumptious, I was ever so satisfied. We hopped back on the tram back to the Melbourne CBD and were ready to hit the hay by the time we got back to Nomad's. We had a roommate shift, but the new people were just as nice and friendly as the former ones.
Saturday:
We went back to the market in the morning to get breakfast and lunch for our day on the Great Ocean Road (!). We basically got the same foods and walked to Budget, where Deb rented a car for us to drive along the road. Deb, Michelle, and Kristy each took a turn driving, but I didn't because, let's face it, I'm not a great driver when I'm on the right side of the road, let alone the left side. Anyways, we got our maps and headed out in our beautiful red Peugeot Cruze. It took us maybe an hour and a half or so to get to the actual Great Ocean Road, but once we got there, it was absolutely fantastic. This is probably the most "to-do" tourist thing when you're in Melbourne. The route in its entirety will actually take you from Melbourne to Adelaide, in South Australia, but we stopped around the Twelve Apostles, which is a landmark rock formation. It was a really fun time spending ten or so hours in a car with these girls, and that sounds sarcastic, but it's 100% true. They really are great people. We ended the Great Ocean Road at Thunder Cave, which was probably my favorite part of the whole ride. We took a short cut back, which took about three hours. We arrived at Nomads at 7:30 PM, parked the car on the side of the road, and went inside to freshen up before dinner. We ended up going to this Thai place around the corner. It was only my second Thai experience, and I liked this one a lot more than my first one. The name of the dish was ridiculous, but it was broccoli, red peppers, rice, and chicken, in a mild garlicky sauce. It was actually delicious, I enjoyed it a lot. At the suggestion of Laura'a boyfriend Chris, we went to check out The Rooftop Bar. We didn't want to stay out late, because we had a long day and a super early morning the next day, but we wanted to at least have a small taste of Melbourne nightlife and grab a drink after dinner. We had to climb up seven flights of stairs to get there, but it was definitely an awesome experience. It was a super chill, slightly alternative atmosphere, with really good music, and a comfortable vibe. We spent an hour or so there and then went back to Nomad's, and packed up our things for the flight the next morning.
Sunday:
We woke up at 4 AM so that we could check out and leave the hostel at 4:30, fill the tank of the rental car, arrive at the airport and return the car by 5:15 and get through check-in and security for our 6:40 flight. All four of us were on the same Tiger flight back. Let me please just say how nice it was to have a car to drive ourselves to the airport instead of having to take a cab or figure out some other form of public transport. Tiger Airways is an independent, low-budget airline. The terminal was not connected to the airport. It was in a separate steel building, which was a ten minute walk from the other airport departure gates. Kind of sketchy, but inexpensive. We were laughing about the lack of quality of Tiger Airways, but whatever, it was fine. The flight left on time and arrived in Sydney early. I slept a bit on the plane, which was nice.
At the moment, I'm kind of exhausted, because I've had a long, packed three and a half days. But, I'm absolutely thrilled that it worked out the way it did. We got to do SO MUCH and I really feel like I was able to effectively experience the best Melbourne has to offer. And it's cool that I've been able to visit three Australian states and have been able to experience three major Australian cities.
Things I don't want to forget:
"Finding new adventures... Hanging out with bikers... Could you imagine living..."-- "...on the Great Ocean Road."
