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Published: October 19th 2012
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Sorry we are so far behind...we finally got round to trying to catch up the other night and the computer crashed when we tried to save, so we haven't been able to stomach (or afford the internet time) trying again until now!
After our rushed entrance to Melbourne we gave up on getting the car back and parked it up for the night. Poor James had to get up at 7am the next day to get it back, but no extra charge so disaster averted! This was our first real hostel experience, after port fairy being so quiet, and we were doing it big style. This was a huge mega hostel, and we were in an 8 bed dorm and as always, all the bottom bunks were full, with the lay out, we couldn't actually see each other from our beds, which is a bit strange after being together constantly for 3 months! We have since realised this was a really good hostel, at the time we found it big and impersonal, with a huge communal area like a 6th form common room. We headed out to the only pub we could find and had some overpriced pub tea and
then went back for a couple of drinks in the hostel.
The next morning we had planned to meet up with Kate (Rach's godmother) who i haven't seen for years and was in Melbourne on business. She picked us up with her friend Harvey and they took us out to St Kilda, which is a suburb of Melbourne, in the harbour area, so it is the cool beach area of the city. They took us for a lovely and huge seafood lunch and then left us in St kilda to explore a bit. We had a walk around the beach and then got the tram back into the city. We had a bit of an explore of federation square, where the preparations were underway for the AFL grand final on the saturday, this is a really big thing in Melboure and there were events on every day in the week leading up to it, involving lots of freebies, players doing signings and bands on the stage. Then we had a walk out to the Melbourne Cricket Ground, a famous and huge stadium where the AFL final was going to be taking place. We only really went around the outside,
didn't much fancy paying for the tour! Then we headed for the shops to get kitted out with some new more weather appropriate shoes! (Bit colder than we are used to and flip flops and tights don't work so well!) On the night there was a free pasta dinner in the hostel, so we went for it and then realised it was only 7.30pm with a long night ahead of us. So we togged up and tried to make it to the opening night of one of the events at the Melbourne Fringe festival. When we got there however it was full.. never mind!
The next day we headed back to federation square to see if we could score some freebies we missed out on the day before, but mostly failed! Then we headed for the Australian Centre for moving images. This was a really good interactive media museum, and free so the best type of museum! It seemed to focus on the history of media with some vague links to Australia. Then we took the free tourist bus to an area called Fitzroy, seems to be the arty area. We had a walk around the grounds of an
old convent, went to a cafe for lunch with a lovely garden you wouldn't expect to find in the city! We walked for miles back into the town, down all the lovely cafe lined streets. On the evening we finally made it to that show at the Fringe, which was a tiny little show, 20 seats in a room and only 2 actors, but pretty funny and i think a very melbourne experience!
The next day was our last in Melbourne and we signed up for the walking tour from the hostel, unfortunately they only run this once a week so we couldn't do it any earlier in the trip when it might have been more helpful! It was pretty interesting as the guy took us round things he thought were important in Melbourne, the street art, the sculptures and ridiculous land marks like "the smallest art gallery in Australia" "the last lift operator in Melbourne" and took us to a sweet shop for freebies. But when we were 2 hours in and he took everyone to china town for lunch we decided to bail...we did not want to spend our entire last day on this tour! We then
headed on the free circle tram to Queen Victoria Market, whicgh was a huge vibrant food market, where we got bbq food and wine for our campervan trip, and had some lunch from the deli counters. Even here people gave us free wine tasting! Again with unfortunate timing, tonight was the weekly pub crawl from the hostel, so we joined in and actually had a really good night! met some nice people, which had been dificult actually in the hostel due to the lay out and the amount of ever present long stayers in the hostel. We dropped out before the clubbing, due to our long drive the next day.
The next morning we were up early to get the train out to where the campervan pick up was. Everything went ridicuously smoothly and we were out of town with plenty of time, as the AFL parade was on at lunch time and we hoped to avoid the chaos. As we were checking in we realised....we left our passports in the hostel safe, so we had to get the train back into town and then back out again, bit of a nightmare but managed before the parade and beofre
our train tickets expired, so aside from losing some time disaster averted again!
We really enjoyed Melbourne, its a vibrant arty city with lots to offer and loads of free activities for travellers. Can you imagine the hop on hop off loop buses in London being free? We survived our first hostel experience and we're ready for our campervan experience, Sydney here we come!
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