Melbourne

---

I haven't posted in a while and missed the whole outback and Adelaide. I figured I'd write about Melbourne now because it's a cool city and I have lots to write about. I'll get back to the outback later because it was such an amazing, unique experience that I want to take my time writing about it to do it justice.

I've spent the last 3 days in Melbourne and it's unlike any city I've ever been in before. If I had to describe it in one word it would be quirky. There are a ton of little cafes, ice cream shops, bars, shops and they're all in these intricate alleys. It's very confusing and difficult to find your way around. People here are very artistic almost in a San Francisco kind of way.

One of the unwritten rules in the city is the more hidden and unknown a place is, the cooler it is and the more locals will like to go there. A lot of places you will never find unless you know where they are. On my first day here, I did a walking tour of the city. Walking tours are normally pretty good to get your bearings, kind of learn where things are. The Melbourne walking tour just completely confused me and made me feel overwhelmed about all the crazy streets and alleys. I asked 3 different people on the walking tour to point out on a map where we were cause I had no idea and all three of them pointed to different sides of the city.

Our tour guide gave us a recommendation for a bar on the first night. I had the location on Google maps and walked around the block twice trying to find it. This bar was a science themed bar. The drinks came in test tubes or beakers and you can get a syringe to drink out of. Other bars in Melbourne include "Berlin Bar" which is themed as Berlin before the wall came down. One half of it is one theme and the other half is another theme. There's a bar where you arrive in a library and have to pull the red book to open the door behind (not even kidding!) Went for ice cream today, once again down a tiny alley with no signs for it or anything and they use liquid nitrogen to make your ice cream right in front of you. Crazy quirky places like that are everywhere and you have to wander down unmarked alleys to discover crazy new things. Went to another bar which started as a bet between two brothers. One of them said you can't start a bar for less than $10,000 and the other one wanted to prove he could. The roof was just a tarp basically, it didn't really have any walls, but he managed to do it.

On Tuesday it was the Melbourne Cup, which is a big horse race. I went to the central square to watch it on the big screen and there were tons of people there. It's a public holiday for the race, so people everywhere were wearing fancy racehorse clothing and the silly hats. Cool experience.

Australians have to be the laziest speakers in the world. Almost every word is abbreviated. Breakfast is breaky, toasted sandwiches are toasties, poker machines are pokies, kangaroos are just roos, it goes on and on. The best one is the Melbourne Cricket Ground. It's a stadium with capacity 100,000 where the AFL final is played. They shorten it to MCG, but then realized that is too long, so now they just call it "the G." They abbreviated the abbreviation...

---