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Published: September 1st 2009
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Hey all!
So we haven’t written for a while, partly because we have been busy sorting out somewhere to live partly because we have been having too much fun and partly because we have been lazy!
Since we last wrote we swapped high rise luxury living for a backpackers hostel.. Bit of a culture shock there!
We booked 2 beds in a dorm room for 7 nights, giving ourselves that long to find somewhere to live.
The hostel was actually a nice place to stay, only 5 beds in our dorm and the hostel was always lively with organised trips and tours and had pretty good facilities for cooking and stuff.
I am not going to bore you all with what we did everyday but some highlights include, getting lost trying to find a bar and ending up finding a actual Irish pub with Irish owners and completely Irish customers! (apart from us anyway) Suffice to say we did eventually find the original bar we were looking for but after a few pints of Guiness!
We have been to the MCG twice now, both times to watch Aussie rules football, we are Hawthorn supporters now having been
lent a season ticket for their last 2 games! AFL is an amazing sport to watch we have the utmost respect for the players. They play 4 quarters of 30 minutes each and the distances they run during the match are quite incredible. They have footballers rather than rugby players temperaments which means the odd mass brawl or 3 doesn’t go amiss. The MCG is also an amazing place to watch sports in general with a capacity of just over 100,000. On our second visit, Hawks vs. Bombers (Hawthorn v Essendon) both teams were playing for the last spot in the finals play off so was an important game and pulled in a good crowd, over 77,000. Hawks unfortunately lost but Dan and several hundred other Hawks fans had a few words to say to Baldy (the umpire) about his decisions!
We went on a free walking tour organised by the hostel, was great for us as the tour basically pointed out to us all the best bars/pubs/clubs/record shops/clothes shops/gig venues etc! We also got to see some ‘lollies’ (sweets to you and me not lollipops) being made by hand which was cool, and got some really nice chocolate
for free from Haighs, a company apparently taught to make chocolate by the Lindt family after one of the Haighs taught one of the Lindts to speak English! We saw all the major tourist sites in Melbourne and the tour lasted all day.
We went to Mebourne aquarium, as soon as Siobhan heard there were penguins there we had to go! It was really good but did nothing to settle Dans nerves about Australia’s coastal waters! Everything in there apart from the penguins, came from Australia, including all sorts of jelly fish, sharks, huuuuuge crabs and lobsters that looked like they could sink a ship and millions of different fish with teeth! The penguins were great they have actual snow in their enclosure and they were quite active (trying to escape we reckon) and we saw the sharks get fed.
Another night out we had we went to a club called Billboard, we didn’t get there till late and Dan asked the Bouncer if we could still get in. ‘NO’ was the answer until he noticed Siobhan standing there and he said ‘Oh actually, yeah ok’…… Nice.
The club was good and stayed open til 4am which was
great seeing as we were checking out of the hostel at 10am! The main reason for mentioning this night wont make sense to 99% of people reading this but…
The Melbourne shuffle and Hardstyle are the staple dance moves for Melbourne kids. Dan was amazed and might have had a drunken attempt at some Hardstyle dancing. Woot!
We have eaten more Asian food since being in Melbourne than ever before well maybe not as much as in Asia but close! There are so many restaurants, Japanese/Chinese/Thai/Vietnamese Korean the list go on… and they are all mega cheap! Something we love about Melbourne is the B.Y.O booze policy in loads of restaurants!
The rest of our week was taken up with house hunting and exploring the city. We saw a few houses but finally found a room in an apartment in central Melbourne. It is a fantastic location right in the heart of Melbourne’s tourist and business district and a bargain too!
Since moving in we have just been job hunting, which is even more boring than house hunting, because at least with house hunting you are looking for something you want, who wants a job!?
One thing we weren’t really prepared for is how crap the weather is! It is so changeable, bright sunshine and hardly a cloud, next comes gale force winds and then rain and if your lucky some hail! Roll on summer time!
Until we travel or do something of interest, I doubt we will be updating the blog. Photos will still be going up as and when on Siobhan’s face book though.
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