International Mooching... Melbourne Heat

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August 13th 2008

Published: August 31st 2008

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El Scook Y Natalia

Nat on the Pier

Melbourne: capital of the state of Victoria and Australia's second most populous city, is probably most famous (in Australia) for various sporting events such as the Aussie Grand Prix and the Melbourne Cup, and (outside Australia) for long running daytime soap Neighbours (bet you get the theme tune stuck in your head now... I have). Having never really got into it for more than a couple of weeks during my finals when it was a good excuse for a tea break, we decided to give the famed Ramsay St set tour a miss, but we were assured that none other than Harold Bishop was a regular in the pub under our hostel... exciting eh?! Ahem.

Lots of people seem to really love Melbourne, so we were looking forward to seeing it. By all accounts it's a lot more European than the rest of Australia, with lots of nice cafes and bars. The St Kilda area, where we stayed, is cool and kitschy, but not overrun with stuff to do... so we basically spent our time wandering round the beach and the shopping areas of Prahran and Acland road, drinking expensive drinks (3 squids fifty for a pint was a shock

Travis Livingstone Seagull

Little known relative of Jon

to the system after south america), going for runs round Albert Park lake, and generally mooching. We did manage to shake off the lazyness to get our asses down to see a gig (kiwi electropoppers Ladyhawke: rockin'), wander round the city centre, and head down the massive Queen Victoria Market (which was quite interesting, about half gourmet food stalls, and half the mingingest clothes you ever saw - unusual bedfellows!)

So basically, this isn't really a blog of derring do! On the plus side, all that time you've saved reading, you can go a make a nice cup of tea.

Before we leave you - some other observations on our new temporary home:

1) You can really tell its school summer hols in the UK and the States...there were a lot of very drunk school leavers playing the guitar badly in the hostel kitchen, snogging in the tv room and passing out in the corridors.

2) Aussie winter is remarkably similar to UK summer!

3) No poisonous spiders spotted yet - lets hope it stays that way.

4) Soft Rock has really not lost it's appeal here at all. I'm quite tempted to cut