Advertisement
Published: March 1st 2007
Edit Blog Post
Arriving in Melbourne after the Great Ocean Road trip was much needed. I was looking forward to staying in once place for longer than one night and having a nice relaxing time. I'd heard that St Kilda, a suburb of Melbourne was the place to do this.
So arriving at Base Backpackers and checking into my 8 bed mixed dorm, I went straight down to the beach. It was lovely and warm and the beach was quite busy with lots of interesting looking people, how I love people watching whilst sunbathing.
Nicola, who I'd met in the Adelaide YHA arrived that evening, so we decided to see what St Kilda had on offer. There is a main street which runs parallel to the beach, and it really reminded me of Bryon, with lots of lovely cafes and bars, lots of arty, chic looking people just chilling out, drinking wine outside street cafes. So we found a bar with a nice sofa, which had our names written all over it, and settled down with a few beers and watched the rest of St Kilda stroll by. Whilst sitting here we noticed the Thai restaurant next door, and studying the food
the people were eating we decided to eat there too. I had a tasty king prawn Pad Tai with a nice bottle of wine.
This was only the beginning of what me and Nicola found to be a place where you couldn't resist the food, and I'm sure if you stayed here long enough you would undoubtly get fat.....although I couldn't see one fat person anywhere. You see as you walk along this street we discovered the most amazing cake shops we'd ever seen. We actually went cake window shopping.....strolling up and down the street looking in the windows until we found our perfect cake. Once we found it we ordered a cup of tea, but the tea took too long to come, so by the time the tea had arrived we'd already eaten our cakes. Then there were the burgers.....now this was a killer, we found this place called Grill'd which served the most amazing burgers, so amazing that we went back there for lunch 3 days running, and I don't usually like burgers! So I have probably put on a bit of weight, but it was worth it. See pic of me eating my fave Zen Hen
burger!
Apart from eating, we did actually find other things to do. We went to the Moonlight cinema which is held in Melbourne botanic gardens during the summer. So, we made a picnic and went along, having been told that we could hire beanbags once we got there. Unfortunatley the beanbags had sold out, and we looked the obvious tourists as everyone else there had brought with them pillows, cushions, hampers, champagne, rugs, sleeping bags etc etc, to make the evening more comfortable. We each had a jumper, and deciding whether to sit on it or wear it was a hard decision. I sat on mine scared of the insects crawling on my legs, and instead got pretty cold. The film was Volver starring the oscar nominated Penelope Cruz, but I hadn't realised the whole film was in Spanish, therefore subtitled, and with a hundred heads in my way spent most of the film swaying from side to side trying to read. It was a nice evening though, and it was an interesting film.
The following day we met 4 American firefighters who had been drafted over to help put out the bushfires which had been quite severe
near to Melbourne. They had just finished their work and were now on a 2 week holiday. They were going to an Austrialian Rules Football match, and hearing that it was only about 6 pounds (how cheap is that compared to England!) we decided to go along. We got good seats, the atmosphere was amazing, so we sat down with our beers, and watched the game. What we really needed was an Australian with us to explain the rules, it seemed a mix between football and rugby, although they could also punch the ball and bounce it. By quarter time (the games is in quarters) we'd kind of figured out the rules. So we sat back and enjoyed it. Great entertainment and I'm glad we went along. It's just a shame I'm missing the Grand Prix by a few weeks. Seeing sport in Oz seems to much more accessible than in England.
On a low note, I'm sorry to say that I didn't get to the Neighbours night....it was so expensive, and seeing as I hadn't watched it in years I was sure I wouldn't know any of the actors who come to the meet and greet. Although I
later found out that it was Toady, Paul Robinson, Harold and Steph, so I would have known them. And I would have also missed Dr Karl Kennedy singing in his band. Oh well, maybe I'll get to do it in Sydney, or even better go to the beach where they film Home & Away and see Kim (sorry Ruth!)
We also went and did a spot of shopping in the centre of Melbourne. Some guys from our hostel had told us that there were great views from the cafe on the top floor of this really expensive hotel. Apparently they hadn't been let into the cafe, and instead went into the toilets and got a great view of Melbourne from there, and took photos from there, getting odd looks from the people using the toilets. Well, we thought we would go along, but actually get into the cafe and have a nice cup of coffee whilst admiring the view, not being resigned to the toilet....of all places! So as we got to the hotel we realised just how posh it was. We were wearing shorts and vest tops, so arriving on the top floor and entering the cafe, the
Preston, Nat, me and Nicola
I'm sure a beer will help us understand the rules better waiter came up to us and shunned us saying it was very busy....we could clearly see that it was not at all busy, and he was just trying to get rid of us, how rude! So as we left we saw the toilets, and went in there instead. It was indeed an amazing view and a great place to see the whole of Melbourne....from a toilet.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.046s; Tpl: 0.011s; cc: 8; qc: 24; dbt: 0.0254s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1mb
Eve
non-member comment
My dream!
Hi Sarah, I have always dreamed of going to a film ourdoors in a park! Shame about the subtitles though! Hope you didn't get too bitten. Take care xxxx