Arrival and First Melbourne Impressions

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Ahhh after 22+ hours of flying and waiting in airports I'm finally here. First 15 hour flight went smoother than expected; I actually over-packed in hindsight. Spent the majority of the flight reading, playing puzzles, sleeping and listening to some comedy on the iPhone. Went pretty quick and painless all things considered.

Upon arrival we got settled at Ali's pad where I will be spending the next few nights before we head off to Tasmania. Ali's place is pretty chill - he's got super nice roommates (flat mates) and his apartment is located in a bustling part of town.

After spending a few minutes getting settled and changing out of my foul-smelling airline clothes we ventured out for some food and sights. I was warned previously that food and drink here is super expensive -- and I can now confirm that fact for you. On average a typical plate of food starts around $10-12 and goes up from there. Many plates are in the $15-20 range and we haven't been eating at posh spots. According to Ali it's because they have to import a lot of goods here...also anything that's prepared or served to you is just crazy expensive here by nature.

Quick funny cultural note: No tipping here...at all. When we sat down at the lunch spot it was during a busy time and after we took a little longer than expected to figure out our order the server actually told us we needed to hurry it up and that there's a 30 minute limit to get in/get out. That would never fly in the U.S. but I kinda dug it.

With all that said, the food I've had so far is very high-quality. For lunch I had roasted/minced lamb with greens on toast and for dinner we had vietnamese noodles and a rice dish. You can tell that there are significant asian cultural influences here in both the food and the local population. Lots more "southeast Asian" people on the streets here compared to the U.S as well.

Alcohol is CRAZY expensive here so we're going to have to take it easy with drinks. I'm talking $8 for a Corona (they love Corona here for some inexplicable reason) and $17 for a "Jug" (pitcher) of draft beer. Their "jugs" of beer are smaller than our pitchers as well. It doesn't get much better buying alcohol in stores either. So long story short this isn't going to be much of a beer tour kind of trip...but I live in PDX so that's ok 😊

Other highlights of the day included walking around the Melbourne CBD ("Central Business District") and checking out some of the local sights. We walked up the Yarra River and to a small bar located under a bridge there. After walking through the downtown shopping area we made our way over the the Melbourne Cricket Grounds and then made our way back to the pad to chill out. I was super jetlagged by then so I did some light reading and hit the sack around 9:30.

All in all I couldn't have asked for a better first day in Melbourne. Got some light sightseeing done, met some of Ali's friends, and got some good rest. I'll wrap this up with a few highlights:

-Driving on the opposite side of the road takes some getting used to, but crossing the street having to pay attention to traffic flowing in opposite directions is the really hard part! If you've got a few beers in you I imagine it could get even harder 😉

-Similarly, people walk on opposite sides of the sidewalk. So when you're trying to avoid people coming the other way things can get weird

-No tipping. Partially makes up for the horribly inflated prices on everything but not really

-Enjoying the Asian cultural influences around here. I can tell the Asian food is going to be grub

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