Advertisement
Published: January 30th 2011
Edit Blog Post
After a brief kip on a metal bench outside Sydney's domestic airport, we couldn't wait to meet our wonderful mate Maria at her spacious pad. After going very much the long way round, our airport shuttle bus eventually found her street and with droopy eyes we greeted our Finish friend, had breakfast and headed for bed to catch up on our missed sleep. In the afternoon the 3 of us headed into the city centre and split up as Jay went in search of a few birthday presents for Jo, while the girls had some of their own retail therapy. Once the shopping was done, Maria took us to a really cool back street bar for a drink. It had a real Bohemian vibe which made us feel as if we were somewhere between Moseley and Camden Town, with much better weather outside of course.
Later that night we headed to Brunswick Street for some food and pre-Clewlow birthday drinks – once again this whole area was really trendy but without the pretentiousness of London. A mix of fashionistas, musicians and nomads frequented the dozens of swanky bars alongside Melbourne's top brass but in the end we settled on a
quaint watering hole that was completely dead, just because of the décor, it looked like something out of a French burlesque house and as soon as we arrived we were welcomed in by a friendly Scottish barman, ordered a bottle of fizz to toast Jo turning 24 at Midnight and relaxed in our chez long style seating until home time.
The next day we headed over to the beautiful botanical gardens for a picnic in the blazing sunshine. We spent a few hours relaxing, feeding the ducks and the black swans, which we had no idea even existed until one waddled over to see what we had to offer. We even got to feed two little long neck turtles that were swimming in the lake. After a few beers and lots of sun we called it a day and headed back to Maria's, where we could get ready for Jo's special birthday meal.
That night we got ourselves dolled up and headed out to catch the tram to the Docklands,
a swanky locations that housed numerous restaurants catering for lots of different tastes. The tram seemed to be taking an age and it was getting late so
we hailed a cab instead. When we got there a number of the venues had already stopped serving – apparently summer is a quiet time for bars and restaurants in Melbourne! Not sure we understand why. But anyway, we still managed to find a stylish restaurant that served delicious steaks – a favourite that we haven't enjoyed for a while. After a good feed and a jug of beer, we headed for bed.
The next day we met up with Maria's friend Lucas who drove all of us to St. Kilda beach about 30 minutes from the city. We did some sunbathing but avoided the sea after seeing a few dog owners allow their pets to use it as a public toilet! Then we headed to the strip for lunch and a bit of shopping before wandering down to the pier to see if we could find any little penguins hiding in the rocks. It was hard to believe that these cute creatures would live here so close to so many people but sure enough after a bit of searching we found two fairy penguins hiding in the rocks sheltering from the breaking waves. Happy with our find we
caught the tram back as Lucas had left early to meet another friend, as we changed trams in the city centre we had to stop briefly to enjoy the hilarious ditties of a crazy busker man who danced around with his puppet made from rubbish. When we got back we made a big buffet dinner for the whole house with chicken skewers and loads of salad and snacks, we all got on the beer, then the wine, and the plan was to take the party outside to check out some more of the local nightlife, but in the end, after chatting away for so long we realised it was 1am and we had probably left it too late to get in anywhere! Oops.
The next day we took it easy and barely got out of bed until it was time for us and Maria to go to the Moonlight Cinema. This is a big outdoor movie screen set up in the grounds of the botanical gardens, where lots of people come to sit on the grass and watch a film as the sun sets and dusk falls. This night it was the new Harry Potter flick which was an
enjoyable watch, and viewing it under the stars made it even more fun.
The next day it was time to leave lovely Melbourne, we picked up our hire car for our big road trip and headed South to Phillip Island, ready for our next adventure.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.108s; Tpl: 0.019s; cc: 8; qc: 51; dbt: 0.0573s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.2mb