More Melbourne magic

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- FOOD: Very good Thai chicken salad.

- AREA: Trendy St Kilda's with outdoor cafes and bars, palm tree lined streets, quiet beach; Chapel Street with it's changing shop scene; Richmond; BAD overnight bus journey.

- PEOPLE: Trendy, beautiful people; spoke to Rogan; very large lady next to me on bus with tiny seats, guy with mental health condition shouting about wanting to bash someone's head in all night, bus driver whose first time it was.


Fri 26th: I took the tram to St Kilda's to hang out with the trendy, beautiful people that live here as I obviously fit in so well! I spoke to Rogan which was so nice but I wish I'd got my head around the size of Australia a bit more before coming here as I have no time to meet him now (I suppose a 2 hour drive out of Melbourne city is a bit too much for him to come and meet me for one drink!).
There are lots of outdoor cafes and bars to watch the world go by for a few hours and nice shops here with palm trees lining the streets. There is a good stretch of quiet, sandy beach where I spent some time relaxing before heading to Chapel Street.

This very long street starts with lots of trendy retro shops, becomes more studenty and then becomes more and more upmarket as the road goes on. I ended up in Richmond where I had a nice Thai chicken salad (Thai food is BIG over here) outside in the sun to fill myself up before the overnight bus journey to Sydney.

I didn't want to leave Melbourne so soon as I really like it here and would like to explore more of the suburbs and see an Aussie Rules Football game but a weekend in Sydney calls.
It was strange getting an overnight bus again after all this time but it didn't bother me as I was expecting first class compared to South America. Hmphhh - no chance!
The seats were really small (and I was sitting next to a large lady) and the advertised 'fully reclinable' which was showing on the video about how lovely these buses are meant to be only reclined 1 inch.

There was a free double seat across the aisle but someone had the same idea as me and came to sit in it. However, once the bus started moving, he went back to his original seat so I jumped in it. 10 minutes later he was back again but sat in front of me, next to someone who didn't look very happy to have their spare seat occupied. I asked him if I'd taken his seat and he said yes although he was fine sitting where he was. I felt bad for the person next to him so moved back and let him have the double seat. I knew that seat wasn't really his but didn't say anything as he had mental health issues and was getting agitated. 20 minutes later when the bus picked up more passengers and the 2 people who did have those seats made him move, it really agitated him and he started talking about bashing someone's head in very soon, in more abusive terms. He then spent the rest of the night talking/shouting to himself.

Also, the bus driver filled us with confidence by informing us that we'd have to be patient with him as it was his first time doing this journey alone! Every time I felt the bus judder on the hard shoulder area I nearly ran downstairs to grab the wheel from him in case he was sleeping. 11 hours of driving without a colleague to help out is lots. Bring back South American buses!

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Comments

[mandajk]

St Kildas
I bet you did fit in very well in St Kildas! Ha ha! xx