Hostel Hopping

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Day 132-134
15th-17th January

We finally arrived in Melbourne after that dreadful train journey. We hadn’t booked anywhere to stay but I’d had a quick look on the internet and knew there were several hostels very close to the station. So while Ellory waited with our bags in the station I went off to find somewhere for us to stay. Unfortunately both of us had failed to realise that the Australian Tennis Open was due to start in the next few days and everywhere was full! I’d been to the 3 hostels I knew about and no one had any space…. So I came back to the station and used one of their internet terminals to find somewhere for us to stay. Flinders Station Backpackers, I booked our room online and we decided to walk over there, because although we were pretty sure it was way too early to check in, we would probably be able to leave our stuff there.

It was about a mile walk to the hostel. Normally well within both of our capabilities, however that morning, with immensely heavy backpacks, no sleep and the temperature already being unbearably hot, it nearly half killed us! We eventually got there though and made our way to the reception. As we expected we could not check in, but we were able to store our bags and collapse on a sofa where we caught up with some sleep while we waited for our room to be ready. This hostel is…interesting. Put it this way, if I had been there when I was 18 I probably would have loved it, but Ellory and I just felt like old fogies! Never mind it was somewhere to sleep and we had a private room so it wasn’t completely horrendous, although there were separate male/female toilets and Ellory and I had each been given a swipe card so I could only go into the female bathroom and Ell could only go into the male bathroom! Classy….

We dumped our bags in the room and headed off into Melbourne. Ellory had planned to get dreadlocks while we were travelling and had been growing his hair for months, he’d done his research and found a place called the Weird Sisters who could do it. So we hopped onto the tram and headed to St Kildas, a suburb of Melbourne to check it out. I really liked the tram system, it was pretty easy to use and it was our main method of transport for the entire time we were in Melbourne.
St Kildas is right on the coast and it has a very holiday atmosphere, we eventually found the hair place and Ellory had a long chat with them before deciding to go for it and booked an appointment. They only had an appointment on the 19th which was longer than we had planned to stay in Melbourne but we worked it out! Job done we went back to central Melbourne, stopped at a supermarket and an offlicence to pick up food and goon and headed off to the Royal Botanical Gardens to have a picnic and relax in the sunshine for a few hours. It was a really nice afternoon/evening and an excellent end to a pretty stressful and busy day.

The next morning we knew why we normally avoided the normal backpacker hostels in Australia if at all possible. We’d been kept awake all night by drunken idiots banging on the wall next door and then the arguments with security who had to come and shout at them repeatedly for making too much noise. So, with the rubbish night’s sleep the night before as well, we were pretty freaking tired and quite happy to make that day a rest day. We did a bit of blogging, Ell had a nap and I went out to get some food while he was sleeping and ended up having a yummy smoothie in a café outside Flinders Street station while reading a newspaper and watching the world go by. The rest of the day was very relaxed and in the evening we decided to go to the cinema. The nearest one I could find on the internet was at the Melbourne Central shopping centre and it had restaurants as well which was a bonus! We were in a bit of a Chinese food mood so we went to a restaurant called Shabu Shabu. A normal all you can eat Chinese restaurant except you had a bowl of broth on a hot plate in front of you where you could cook your food! It was flipping good fun and we both ate waaay too much! We then bought tickets to see Little Fockers. The Fockers Series normally makes me cringe, I can’t watch awkward comedy! However Ellory really wanted to see it, and fortunately it wasn’t as cringy as the previous two films so I was happy.

We had a short walk back to our rubbish hostel and to bed for our final night in that hostel (thank goodness!). This was because we had to leave the next day as the hostel was completely full for the Australian Open. We had to stay in Melbourne because of Ellory’s appointment on the 19th. I’d done a bit of research while we had been in the first hostel and found a better looking one in St Kildas (we both fancied the thought of being near the ocean) called the Home Travellers Motel. So the next day we checked out and headed down to St Kildas on the tram. This hostel was so much better! Once again we had a bit of wait until our room was ready but there was a nice lounge where we could chill out and watch television. Our room was also loads better, we had our own bathroom and even better we had a fridge and a microwave, freaking brilliant! We nipped out to get some food to stash in our fridge as we were staying in this hostel for the next 3 nights. Finally it felt like we might like Melbourne, we’d been very indifferent up until this point due to the godawful hostel. But now we were in a nice hostel, with the beach nearby and St Kildas looked lovely so after another day of not doing much we looked forward to actually doing something. The next day we had booked to go on another one of our wedding presents, the Puffing Billy Tour.

Liz xx

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