Melbourne

Melbourne was good. Melbourne’s weather for the majority of the week that we were there was brutal.

We took the train from Port Macquarie to Golburne. It was a long but uneventful train ride. It was 15 hours of traveling that day and by the time we got to Golburne we were both exhausted. We had a 4 hour stop over in Sydey where we went to this strange asian mall. It looked pretty awesome if you would have time to check everything out but we had neither the energy or the money to spend there. We got to Goulburne around 11:15 and our walk to the motel we talked about nothing but the fact that Ivan Melan was close somewhere in the jail serving 7 or 8 consecutive life sentences. He’s the guy who killed 20 backpackers in NSW. This didn’t freak us out at all. It was a good thing that the motel was so close. When we got to the motel the door to the reception was locked and we thought we might be sleeping outside. After ringing the doorbell for about 10 minutes someone finally came to the door, we’re both pretty sure that he was sleeping because he was really out of it when he took us to our room. The motel was dodgy and our room smelled awful but it was a warm bed to sleep in and really that’s all that matters to us. When we woke up we went for breakfast at a little café. The town, we realized in the daytime is similar to Neepawa, with a very small town atmosphere. The café served chips with their breakfast. It was huge and very strange to be eating eggs and fries at 9 AM. We left Goulburne and got back on the train to Melbourne. When we got to Melbourne we took a cab to our hostel, Urban Central and checked in.

When we got into our room there was a girl in there already. We started talking to her and she seemed really nice and at this point we were excited to be staying in the hostel. A couple minutes later enter boyfriend. At first they seemed nice, talkative and not annoying. We thought that it was just the four of us in the room. 4 beds = 4 people right?? Wrong. We went to try and find some dinner because it was late and we just walked up the road and went to the first thing that appealed to us. It happened to be a extremely delicious and very cheap pizza place. It was probably the best pizza I have ever had. The piled on the toppings and had pretty thin crust. So good. When we got back we put on a movie and all of the sudden this man walks into the room and we were really really confused. He said started a conversation with us and the couple walked out of the room. His name was Carl and he was a aspiring professional poker player. He told us that just a couple weeks prior he had won 160, 000. I still don’t’ know if I believe him but he seems legit since he had just bought a brand new motor bike and along with everything he told us it’s very possible that he had really won that much. He talked a lot about finding god and god helping him win this money. And his only advice to us was to never gamble. He was a nice guy but he snored a lot….A LOT and grunted. So we went to sleep and then the couple came back in and we quickly figured out that they were only paying for one bed. They had their stuff EVERYWHERE, had her knickers hanging from the bunk as well as a disco ball. Everytime I walked down from my bunk I had to step around their stuff. Most often I failed and just walked all over it. They were some of the worst room mates we’ve had yet.

We did a lot of wandering around in Melbourne and checked out Block Pl, which is a small little alleyway where when you walk down everyone talks to you trying to encourage you to eat at their restaurant, we checked out Chinatown…and we have a little story about that. Hannah’s friend Haydn came to see us for a couple days and we went out for dinner the first night. We decided to walk down to Chinatown and go to eat there. We picked a random one. It didn’t look very fancy on the outside but the minute we sat down we knew we were rather out of place. I think it was the moment that we saw 4 people talking about who HAD to serve us. We sat down and they poured us some water and then a server came up to our table…not to take our order but rather to place the napkins on our lap for us. He started with Hannah and then went to Haydn and then by the time I realized what was going on I was like “I’ll just do this myself” because I don’t think that I could hold back my laughter any longer. It was the first time in our lives where have been anywhere where people put the napkin on our laps. It was rather bizarre. We ordered dinner and drinks…Hannah’s drink was 12 dollars…for pretty much 2 shots and a tad bit of juice. I had champagne with a bit of peach liquer and Hadyn had a beer. The meal was good. After you are done they bring you a bunch of toothpicks….classy.

The next day with Haydn we went to another asian place which turned out to be another disaster. We were searching for sushi and this one looked promising. We got inside, got ourselves some menus and found something to eat. Hannah and I both decided to try some tempura sushi, I got a few other rolls and Haydn got a chicken dish. Oh also on the menu we found raw beef with a raw egg cracked on top…mmmm sounds delicious.. So…Hannah and Haydn got their food and I waited and waited. I asked the girl if my sushi was coming she said she would go find out She came back 5 minutes later with the wrong thing so I said that’s not right..can I please get what I ordered and then waited and waited…and by this time Hannah and Haydn were long done and I was no longer hungry. So…I told Hannah and Haydn I’d take care of the bill because I had to clear up a few things regarding my order and the look of horror on Hannah’s face was priceless. I’m pretty sure she thought that I was going to freak out on this woman. I was extremely upset so granted she was totally right in thinking this. I acted surprisingly calm however, but the lady was very understanding so that’s probably why. After lunch we went and checked out a cupcake place that was recommended to me by someone from home and they were absolutely spot on. It was brilliant….so so so so good. Haydn and I had a cookies and cream cupcake and Hannah had a carrot cupcake and we shared a chocolate milkshake. It was amazing and I would also recommend it to anyone going to Melbourne.

While in Melbourne we also checked out the Queen Victoria Markets which had a lot of different little shops and we found a bunch of stuff for the people at home. We also checked out the casino and saw New Moon!!!! The casino had a shopping center, a movie theatre, a food court, a bowling alley, an arcade, lots of restaurants and bars and then of course the slot machines and the card rooms. We checked out the ACMI (Australian center of the Moving Image) It was really neat, and we went to a souvenir shop where Haydn did all of his Christmas shopping and Hannah bought a couple things and I bought some really lame things. We found poutine while we were in Melbourne!!!! And it was vegetarian so Hannah got to try some as well! It’s been 3 years since Hannah had poutine…she was pretty excited. We went to Bridge street which is just similar to Osborne with lots of shopping…too expensive for us travelers but we wanted to check it out. On the last day that we were there we walked to St. Kilda and checked out the pier, acquired some pretty brutal sun burns and wandered around.

Our last couple of nights we stayed in a rather dodgy hostel. The only plus side is that we had our own private room. On hostels.com (where we book most of our hostels) it said that the hostel was newly renovated. Well I think that only the bar and outside of the hostel were renovated because the inside was crap. The reception was never open so we had no idea who the staff was and the walls were paper thin. It was however, right on the beach so that was really nice. We were able to look out the balcony and see the ocean, can’t really complain about that view.

All in all, Melbourne was good and we do look forward to going back when we have a vehicle to check it out a little bit more. However, now we are doing 3 major cities in 24 hours. This is going to be a bit hellish. A 3 AM wake up call is not what we want.