We arrived in Cairns on Saturday evening after having spent the previous week sleeping in a janky "hotel" in Kings Cross. We stayed there because: first of all; we couldnt stand the thought of waking up early to go to work and having to deal with idiot backpackers; second, we wanted our own room and third, we wanted to come full circle. We started our grand Australian tour in the "under belly" of New South Wales and decided we were going to finish off where we started. Good idea :) Our last few days were filled with fruit cups, pies (YES PLEASE) and fabulous company.
On Saturday we woke up, in varying locations and moved our stuff into Brit and Ali's apartment. We hung out with Chris all day and ate, talked and generally had an amazing time. When it was close to leave for the airport we went to Ali's and started to repack. Hannah and Gary were on their way back from the city to see us and it seemed like we would have plenty of time. Katie and I were planning to leave at 5:50 for our flight that left at 7:20. Ali was NOT having it. "You guys should go. You have to check in. Have this conversation on the way to the train station. MOVE IT" Essentially, Ali was our dad trying to get our asses in gear. THANK GOD HE DID!
We said our goodbyes to Ali, Chris, Gary and Hannah (all of which Katie wont get to see again before she leaves) and hoped on the train. When we got to the airport we went and checked in, went through security and went to have dinner. On the way we got caught at a store where Katie wanted to buy EVERYTHING, eventually we moved on and started to eat./ We were taking our sweet time when we finally finished and walked to the gate. When we got there the gate was empty...we ran to the gate doors and handed our tickets to the stewardess, they didn't work. When she scanned our boarding passes they kept coming back declined. REALLY? Where was Ali?? Apparently our seats were just moved and we had better seats that before. Phew.
When we got on the plane with both talked for a bit then passed out, as per usual. When we woke up we were in Cairns! We stepped out onto the tarmac to the most delightful smack in the face of warm air. It was a bit muggy but after Melbourne and the weather in Sydney it was welcome.
We hitched a ride to our hostel via taxi. We got to our hostel, Gillian's, and actually found that it was wicked nice. We got free dinner vouchers, our own en suite bathroom, there is a gym inside and a resort style pool. Of course, we did not pick this hostel ourselves.
We got in and basically walked around the city for a bit then crashed out. on Sunday, we did almost the same. We went and explored. The taxi driver told us that it was about a 15 minute walk to the outlet mall from our hostel. More like half an hour. We got to the mall and did a little shopping. We caught a taxi back and as I was about to close the door this sweet little old lady asked if she could share our taxi. naturally, I said "YES OF COURSE!" She got in and as Katie said "No good deed goes unpunished" What would have taken 5 minutes to walk, took 10 minutes to drive.
We went around in a huge circle as she gave directions which were SO CONFUSING. The poor driver kept doing exactly what she said and then had to correct himself when she would yell "NO NO NOT HERE! BACK THERE!" Over and over...it was actually quite painful. Thirty minutes later we got back to the hostel and were out again to book our reef adventure.
Unfortunately, the weather here has been quite4 tropical. Such that its hot hot hot for awhile then pouring rain. On Monday, we got rain. On Monday we woke up at 6:30 and caught a bus to Port Arthur which is about an hour north of Cairns. We got on a boat and were told that it was possible that it wouldn't be raining on the reef. The weather was really overcast and the water pretty choppy. For those of you who dont know, I get severe motion sickness on windy roads and on boats. What a joke this was.
ten minutes into the drive was about to hurl. My exact words "Katie, this is going to be the worst day of my life". She looked less than please and pretty concerned that she could do NOTHING about it. I sat there for awhile and finally moved to the back of the boat to get a breeze in my face. It felt MUCH better but I also was getting all the water sprayed in my face due to the choppiness. Excellent.
I finally was drenched and had the whole boat staring at me (yes, the entertainment as always) when I moved to the middle of the boat in the back and sat there on the ground so I would only get the wind and not the spray. I hadnt realized that it was also RAINING on me. What an idiot.
We finally stopped at the first site and I dove right in. I was NOT pleased with that boat. It was amazing. Underwater, you couldnt feel the choppiness or anything like that. The fish, coral, and HUGE clams were amazing. Everything you could hope for and more on a day like we had. We went to three stops total and in between the last two Katie and I fell asleep. We woke up to one of the skippers rubbing our backs saying, "Wake up ladies, we're here", "ha, thanks Dave". We went on the third dive and it was also really good. There were sharks and sea turtles. Aw!
On the way back on the hour drive I was really tired. I think it was from the motion- sickness pills I took. I had my head in my hands and was just sleepy. Everyone of the crew gave me barf- bags and the hostess kept asking if I was alright. YES YES IM FINE!! They didnt believe me and NO I didnt puke.
Over all it was a really fantastic day and I wouldn't have traded the weather for anyhing.
Katie and my last dance, last set of plane flights together, last set of unfortunate setbacks, hostels, sunburns, awkward sleeping situations, coffee shops and Thai food experiences while in Australia. Tomorrow were off!
Tuesday, April 20, 2010
Wednesday, April 7, 2010
"I dont have abs, I just have one large condensed ab. Look shes laughing!" Part II
So, after another day of walking around we went to Brunkswick street. SO RAD. It had a ton of vintage shops, jewelry stores and bookshops. We had lunch at Kate's soon to be place of employment "Bimbo's". It is a really cool spot that is not marked from the outside. IT has couches everywhere and weird decorations that range from, masses of Christmas lights to baby dolls dressed up in costumes, some of which are quite inappropriate. The place is also a club at night so it has a lot going on. After that we walked around the street some more and bought gifts (ooh you lucky few!) then we were on our way back to the hostel.
We met up with Kate and Sophie again to go out and see what Melbourne is like at night! My friend at the North Face told me about a few places to go so our first stop was "Workshop". It was pretty cool because we had to go through an old garage door type thing and up some stairs to get to this awesome bar that played music I decided to classify as "electro-groove". Something Katie and I normally wouldnt be into, but it looks like we are expanding our horizons. There was also what seemed like a patio but it was inside so clearly it wasnt, but there were a lot of palm trees,tables and benches. It was generally just a really laid back place.
We stayed there for a drink and then we went to a place Kate had found (that we NEVER would have found even with amazing directions) called "Sister Bellas". We never would have found it because it is up a dark alley past trash cans and to our luck, a pile of vomit Sophie so graciously pointed out. The bar is not marked in any way. We thought we were going to a place down a different alley because we could see a sign and a line outside, however, we turned down the alley before it...
The door was down and to the right, we went in, the only thing the bouncer said was "Just so you know,we close at eleven because of Good Friday"...Great thanks. The bar turned out to be a little more posh than one would think from the view on the outside. Except for the fact that Jenah asked for a Vodka Diet Coke and the barman said...um how about Pepsi, and opened a vending machine bottle of Pepsi up. Other than that, it was really nice. The music was also quite eclectic, from Radiohead to Bone Thugs, I enjoyed it. Well, at least half of it. We stayed there for a few drinks and then it turned out that Sophie was really hungry, thus we moved on.
Sister Bellas
The last place we went that night was called "Cookie".It was on the first floor of a tall building that housed a different bar on each floor. Cookie was a bit more posh than the other two. Everything also seemed to be really tall...the bar, the barmen, the stools, the mirrors (which were also really high, I couldnt even see into them let alone Jenah's attempts). The staff also had awesome uniforms. They had old fashioned plaid-ish shirts, huge old aprons and crazy hats that kind of made you feel like you were in a malt shop in the fifties. On our way back to the hostel we walked by a huge group of guys and one was explaining that he didnt need to have a group of abs if he just had one huge one. He said exactly the quote that titles this blog. Jenah laughed for about ten minutes. It was awesome. It was something you would NEVER hear the guys in Sydney talking about. Especially since they all have about 24 abs and like to show it. ALL the time. After that we were all pretty spent and we had to get up early again on Saturday so we went back to the hostel and passed out.
Cookie
The next morning we woke up at about 6:30am and rushed to the morning market to get food for the road. It was just like a farmers market at home except it seemed cheaper. It was really good so we stocked up and headed for the bus. We jumped on the tour bus and were off to the Great Ocean Road!
We drove for awhile and made a few stops so people could get motion sickness pills (I stocked up and swooped up the very front seat of the bus with Katie, the senior citizens did not seem to mind). It was a really windy (not like breeze blowing but curvy) road and it was beautiful but nothing more exciting than driving down 1 to San Diego. However, the trees were different and our guide was a never ending river of information. Part of the road was actually built by WWI veterans to give them a job when they got back from the war. At one point of the road it was so steep that the workers had to tie themselves to trees so they wouldnt slide down the mountain.
There were a few stops along the road such as the memorial sign that let you know you were now embarking on the G.O.R (since you couldnt tell by the other 9,000 tourist signs that let you know before hand). We also stopped at the road biggest tourist destination, for good reason, The Twelve Apostles:
We also saw the London Bridge, the Razor Back and Lock Ard Gorge. Outside Lock Ard, back in the day(whichever day it was, I forget) there had been a shipwreck and a man in the gorge saw a woman stranded with a piece of wood in the ocean so, he went to rescue her. He brought her to a cave in the gorge and he climbed out of the gorge (which took six hours) to go for help. He found a farm and brought help back to the woman. The man and the woman spent two weeks at the farm recovering before she went back to England to her brother. The woman never thanked her savior because he was of a lower class than she and she believed it was his duty to save her. That man received what today would be the equivalent of 2 million dollars. Crazy.
After seeing all of this we had a two hour drive home. We got back at about 9:00pm and went to the bowling alley to say Goodbye to our dearest Kate. We then went back to our hostel to rack out before another agnoizingly early flight. We took a cab to the airport and got on a plane to Sydney. When we got back to our apartment Steph, one of the interns who worked with Felix moved in with us. It looks as if she and Chris are going to try and stay in the apartment after we move out. Gooood luck!
That...was our trip to Melbourne. I didnt break anything!!!
We met up with Kate and Sophie again to go out and see what Melbourne is like at night! My friend at the North Face told me about a few places to go so our first stop was "Workshop". It was pretty cool because we had to go through an old garage door type thing and up some stairs to get to this awesome bar that played music I decided to classify as "electro-groove". Something Katie and I normally wouldnt be into, but it looks like we are expanding our horizons. There was also what seemed like a patio but it was inside so clearly it wasnt, but there were a lot of palm trees,tables and benches. It was generally just a really laid back place.
We stayed there for a drink and then we went to a place Kate had found (that we NEVER would have found even with amazing directions) called "Sister Bellas". We never would have found it because it is up a dark alley past trash cans and to our luck, a pile of vomit Sophie so graciously pointed out. The bar is not marked in any way. We thought we were going to a place down a different alley because we could see a sign and a line outside, however, we turned down the alley before it...
The door was down and to the right, we went in, the only thing the bouncer said was "Just so you know,we close at eleven because of Good Friday"...Great thanks. The bar turned out to be a little more posh than one would think from the view on the outside. Except for the fact that Jenah asked for a Vodka Diet Coke and the barman said...um how about Pepsi, and opened a vending machine bottle of Pepsi up. Other than that, it was really nice. The music was also quite eclectic, from Radiohead to Bone Thugs, I enjoyed it. Well, at least half of it. We stayed there for a few drinks and then it turned out that Sophie was really hungry, thus we moved on.
Sister Bellas
The last place we went that night was called "Cookie".It was on the first floor of a tall building that housed a different bar on each floor. Cookie was a bit more posh than the other two. Everything also seemed to be really tall...the bar, the barmen, the stools, the mirrors (which were also really high, I couldnt even see into them let alone Jenah's attempts). The staff also had awesome uniforms. They had old fashioned plaid-ish shirts, huge old aprons and crazy hats that kind of made you feel like you were in a malt shop in the fifties. On our way back to the hostel we walked by a huge group of guys and one was explaining that he didnt need to have a group of abs if he just had one huge one. He said exactly the quote that titles this blog. Jenah laughed for about ten minutes. It was awesome. It was something you would NEVER hear the guys in Sydney talking about. Especially since they all have about 24 abs and like to show it. ALL the time. After that we were all pretty spent and we had to get up early again on Saturday so we went back to the hostel and passed out.
Cookie
The next morning we woke up at about 6:30am and rushed to the morning market to get food for the road. It was just like a farmers market at home except it seemed cheaper. It was really good so we stocked up and headed for the bus. We jumped on the tour bus and were off to the Great Ocean Road!
We drove for awhile and made a few stops so people could get motion sickness pills (I stocked up and swooped up the very front seat of the bus with Katie, the senior citizens did not seem to mind). It was a really windy (not like breeze blowing but curvy) road and it was beautiful but nothing more exciting than driving down 1 to San Diego. However, the trees were different and our guide was a never ending river of information. Part of the road was actually built by WWI veterans to give them a job when they got back from the war. At one point of the road it was so steep that the workers had to tie themselves to trees so they wouldnt slide down the mountain.
There were a few stops along the road such as the memorial sign that let you know you were now embarking on the G.O.R (since you couldnt tell by the other 9,000 tourist signs that let you know before hand). We also stopped at the road biggest tourist destination, for good reason, The Twelve Apostles:
We also saw the London Bridge, the Razor Back and Lock Ard Gorge. Outside Lock Ard, back in the day(whichever day it was, I forget) there had been a shipwreck and a man in the gorge saw a woman stranded with a piece of wood in the ocean so, he went to rescue her. He brought her to a cave in the gorge and he climbed out of the gorge (which took six hours) to go for help. He found a farm and brought help back to the woman. The man and the woman spent two weeks at the farm recovering before she went back to England to her brother. The woman never thanked her savior because he was of a lower class than she and she believed it was his duty to save her. That man received what today would be the equivalent of 2 million dollars. Crazy.
After seeing all of this we had a two hour drive home. We got back at about 9:00pm and went to the bowling alley to say Goodbye to our dearest Kate. We then went back to our hostel to rack out before another agnoizingly early flight. We took a cab to the airport and got on a plane to Sydney. When we got back to our apartment Steph, one of the interns who worked with Felix moved in with us. It looks as if she and Chris are going to try and stay in the apartment after we move out. Gooood luck!
That...was our trip to Melbourne. I didnt break anything!!!
Tuesday, April 6, 2010
"It's not trying to be something it isn't, it just is" : Our Melbourne Adventure- Part I
To start our tale, I must begin with the night of Felix's going away excursion. Felix had a flight back to Germany on the Thursday that Katie, Jenah and I had our flight to Melbourne. The difference was we had to be at the airport at 430am and he had to be there at 230pm.
Wednesday night we decide that we are going to go to a place called Karaoke World...Classy I know. The place is actually really cool because you get a room to yourself with just you and your friends and you get to set the play lists and its only five bucks a person per hour ( the hour goes by REAL fast, let me tell you. Anyway, we get to Karaoke world and it's me, Katie, Jenah, Chris, Felix, Thomas, Vanessa, Brit and Ali. Some of those names dont mean anything to you but Ali definitely should. Here is Ali....
He is basically a teddy bear until you find out that he does Krav Maga which basically means he will kick the hell out of anyone. He is also in the Danish army and if one of mine and Katie's best friends here. LOVE him. He was the highlight of Karaoke to his girlfriend Brit's dismay. He basically stole one of the microphones for about an hour and sang his Danish heart out. My favorite was his rendition of "Shout" to which he sang every word, including the part where it lets you know there is a "musical break". So Ali is hammered as is Jamie our Canadian who is obsessed with the bay and refers to Katie and I as "Katie and Jacque- Baythizz" Aww. So after Karaoke we all end up going to Scruffy Murphys except Katie and Brit who are reasonable. Katie decided she needed a nap before the flight. Jenah and I decided to stay up until we got on the plane.
So, we're at Scruffy Murphys, Ali is motor boating Jenah and I like we are in Wedding Crashers and Jamie is just being loud. It gets to a point where everyone is just wrecked so Jenah Felix Chris and I jump into a cab and go home. Chris passes out and Felix Jenah and I wake up Katie and have a cuddle. Good thing Jenah and I had already packed because about twenty minutes later the cab calls and its time to go to the airport. Felix was passed out and the last image I have of him is being unconscious in Katie's pink sheets with his mouth wide open, our resident German (MISS YOU!)
We get in the cab and I am instantaneously tired and about to go into major bitch mode. You've all seen it. I get it from my dad, I'm sorry, I'm working on it. So we get out of the cab to find out that we are so early the airport isn't even open yet. Typical Australia. Open at the very last second just to get two more minutes of sleep. So finally we are allowed through the sliding glass doors which lead to comfort. At this point all Katie and I want is a fruit cup. Katie sees that there is one coffee place open outside the security gates (since we couldnt even check in yet) and goes over. There is CLEARLY a bowl of pre-cut fruit and a VAT of yogurt ready to be made. Katie asks the guy is she can have a fruit cup with yogurt. His response :"Uh...well umm, (looking around cluelessly), yea, youre going to have to wait for the chef to get here" WHAT! IT IS FOUR AM AND YOU CAN PUT FRUIT IN A CUP!!! I was LESS than impressed.
So we finally check in and nothing is open and I have to wait like ten hours to get a Boost Juice which was mediocre and then off we were to the terminal. I pretty much got on the plane and passed out. I fell asleep right after take off and woke up right as we touched down. Keep in mind Katie has been reading the Twilight series so throughout this whole trip (until the end of the Great Ocean Road) she's reading.
We get off the plane and have to decided where we are going to stay. You know how good Katie and I are at picking hostels so Jenah chose a place called "Bozo Backpackers". I rolled my eyes in extreme displeasure but was too tired to care. We got to the hostel after two shuttle rides and it turned out to be really clean. There were hardwood floors and the beds all looked really good. So we though until we laid in them and they creaked worse than the doors in a haunted house.
We had decided to take a two hour nap and then go walk around Melbourne's Central Business District and then go see Kate! We napped and when we woke up one of the girls in our room was there. We chatted to her for a bit and she said "Also, make sure you guys dont bring food in the room. While you were sleeping a mouse was running around because one of the other girls had left fruit in the bin". OF COURSE. Mice and cockroaches are something you just have to get used to here. We thanked her and went out on our way. We were FREEZING.
After being complete spoiled and having gorgeous weather in Sydney it was hard to believe what cold felt like again. I mean it was about the equivalent of 60 degrees but we FROZE. This clearly meant shopping. We went and met Kate at the bowling alley she works and and caught up with her. She told us we should go to the outlet malls and there was a free tram that would take us there. Excellent.
We jumped on the tram and got to the outlets. The first store was a hit and Katie bought an AWESOME jacket there that was about 200bucks cheaper than I thought it would be. We then went to an accessory store and Katie fell in love with luggage. She took forever trying to decided what she wanted and all the while I was trying all these crazy hats on that one would wear to polo match or something. Katie couldn't decide what she wanted so we moved on. The next stop was the UGG outlet. Jenah had been wanting a pair forever so Katie and I gladly went with her.
We all left with UGGS.
More shopping continued, Katie got one of the bags. I got jeans wooo exciting. After our adventure we went back to the hostel and changed because we had to meet Kate to go to St. Kilda for dinner and to see the penguins!
Here is St. Kilda, the long pier jetting into the sea is where you have to walk out to some rocks where the penguins come out at night.
We met her and took the tram which seemed to take forever as it was so crowded. WE got there, ate and went to the penguins! You arent suppose to take pictures of them because it blinds them. Of course there was a dude there snapping away with his camera and Kate had to set him in his place. These penguins are the smallest in the world and are nocturnal. SO CUTE.
Afterward I could barely keep my head up and we were finally on our way back to the hostel. We had decided to meet Kate at the Hertz rental to hire a care for Friday to do the Great Ocean Road. We met at 8am to find out that we are idiots. It wasnt just ANY Friday, it was Good Friday. Every car in all of Melbourne had been rented until the following Tuesday. UGH. So we decided to book a tour to do the Great Ocean Road for Saturday and Friday turned into a free day. We booked our trip and then realized we had a whole day of nothing ahead of us. We set out to checkout the city again.
Most of the things were closed because it was early on Good Friday but we had breafast and then left Kate and Sophie (her friend that was going to go with us) and Jenah Katie and I just walked hoping to get lost and find something awesome. We did.
Melbourne is known for being a more bohemian, laidback city compared to Sydney. Very very true. We found a back alley called "Centre Place" that was just rows of chops and cafes in little garage like things and it was COVERED in graffiti. All the furniture down the alley was milk crates to be used as you please. We found our own crates outside of a place called Hells Upstairs. It was awesome. I had the BEST bagel sandwich of my life. NO JOKE.
I dont think we could find that place again if we tried.
After that we walked down to the Yarra river and saw some cool art down there, nothing was overdone or overly modern or trying to hard to fit some kind of standard. Everything seemed to be just where it belonged. While we were down there Jenah said "Melbourne is just so cool. It's not trying to be anything it isn't, it's just like 'Im Melbourne, whatever'". It was so true.
Wednesday night we decide that we are going to go to a place called Karaoke World...Classy I know. The place is actually really cool because you get a room to yourself with just you and your friends and you get to set the play lists and its only five bucks a person per hour ( the hour goes by REAL fast, let me tell you. Anyway, we get to Karaoke world and it's me, Katie, Jenah, Chris, Felix, Thomas, Vanessa, Brit and Ali. Some of those names dont mean anything to you but Ali definitely should. Here is Ali....
He is basically a teddy bear until you find out that he does Krav Maga which basically means he will kick the hell out of anyone. He is also in the Danish army and if one of mine and Katie's best friends here. LOVE him. He was the highlight of Karaoke to his girlfriend Brit's dismay. He basically stole one of the microphones for about an hour and sang his Danish heart out. My favorite was his rendition of "Shout" to which he sang every word, including the part where it lets you know there is a "musical break". So Ali is hammered as is Jamie our Canadian who is obsessed with the bay and refers to Katie and I as "Katie and Jacque- Baythizz" Aww. So after Karaoke we all end up going to Scruffy Murphys except Katie and Brit who are reasonable. Katie decided she needed a nap before the flight. Jenah and I decided to stay up until we got on the plane.
So, we're at Scruffy Murphys, Ali is motor boating Jenah and I like we are in Wedding Crashers and Jamie is just being loud. It gets to a point where everyone is just wrecked so Jenah Felix Chris and I jump into a cab and go home. Chris passes out and Felix Jenah and I wake up Katie and have a cuddle. Good thing Jenah and I had already packed because about twenty minutes later the cab calls and its time to go to the airport. Felix was passed out and the last image I have of him is being unconscious in Katie's pink sheets with his mouth wide open, our resident German (MISS YOU!)
We get in the cab and I am instantaneously tired and about to go into major bitch mode. You've all seen it. I get it from my dad, I'm sorry, I'm working on it. So we get out of the cab to find out that we are so early the airport isn't even open yet. Typical Australia. Open at the very last second just to get two more minutes of sleep. So finally we are allowed through the sliding glass doors which lead to comfort. At this point all Katie and I want is a fruit cup. Katie sees that there is one coffee place open outside the security gates (since we couldnt even check in yet) and goes over. There is CLEARLY a bowl of pre-cut fruit and a VAT of yogurt ready to be made. Katie asks the guy is she can have a fruit cup with yogurt. His response :"Uh...well umm, (looking around cluelessly), yea, youre going to have to wait for the chef to get here" WHAT! IT IS FOUR AM AND YOU CAN PUT FRUIT IN A CUP!!! I was LESS than impressed.
So we finally check in and nothing is open and I have to wait like ten hours to get a Boost Juice which was mediocre and then off we were to the terminal. I pretty much got on the plane and passed out. I fell asleep right after take off and woke up right as we touched down. Keep in mind Katie has been reading the Twilight series so throughout this whole trip (until the end of the Great Ocean Road) she's reading.
We get off the plane and have to decided where we are going to stay. You know how good Katie and I are at picking hostels so Jenah chose a place called "Bozo Backpackers". I rolled my eyes in extreme displeasure but was too tired to care. We got to the hostel after two shuttle rides and it turned out to be really clean. There were hardwood floors and the beds all looked really good. So we though until we laid in them and they creaked worse than the doors in a haunted house.
We had decided to take a two hour nap and then go walk around Melbourne's Central Business District and then go see Kate! We napped and when we woke up one of the girls in our room was there. We chatted to her for a bit and she said "Also, make sure you guys dont bring food in the room. While you were sleeping a mouse was running around because one of the other girls had left fruit in the bin". OF COURSE. Mice and cockroaches are something you just have to get used to here. We thanked her and went out on our way. We were FREEZING.
After being complete spoiled and having gorgeous weather in Sydney it was hard to believe what cold felt like again. I mean it was about the equivalent of 60 degrees but we FROZE. This clearly meant shopping. We went and met Kate at the bowling alley she works and and caught up with her. She told us we should go to the outlet malls and there was a free tram that would take us there. Excellent.
We jumped on the tram and got to the outlets. The first store was a hit and Katie bought an AWESOME jacket there that was about 200bucks cheaper than I thought it would be. We then went to an accessory store and Katie fell in love with luggage. She took forever trying to decided what she wanted and all the while I was trying all these crazy hats on that one would wear to polo match or something. Katie couldn't decide what she wanted so we moved on. The next stop was the UGG outlet. Jenah had been wanting a pair forever so Katie and I gladly went with her.
We all left with UGGS.
More shopping continued, Katie got one of the bags. I got jeans wooo exciting. After our adventure we went back to the hostel and changed because we had to meet Kate to go to St. Kilda for dinner and to see the penguins!
Here is St. Kilda, the long pier jetting into the sea is where you have to walk out to some rocks where the penguins come out at night.
We met her and took the tram which seemed to take forever as it was so crowded. WE got there, ate and went to the penguins! You arent suppose to take pictures of them because it blinds them. Of course there was a dude there snapping away with his camera and Kate had to set him in his place. These penguins are the smallest in the world and are nocturnal. SO CUTE.
Afterward I could barely keep my head up and we were finally on our way back to the hostel. We had decided to meet Kate at the Hertz rental to hire a care for Friday to do the Great Ocean Road. We met at 8am to find out that we are idiots. It wasnt just ANY Friday, it was Good Friday. Every car in all of Melbourne had been rented until the following Tuesday. UGH. So we decided to book a tour to do the Great Ocean Road for Saturday and Friday turned into a free day. We booked our trip and then realized we had a whole day of nothing ahead of us. We set out to checkout the city again.
Most of the things were closed because it was early on Good Friday but we had breafast and then left Kate and Sophie (her friend that was going to go with us) and Jenah Katie and I just walked hoping to get lost and find something awesome. We did.
Melbourne is known for being a more bohemian, laidback city compared to Sydney. Very very true. We found a back alley called "Centre Place" that was just rows of chops and cafes in little garage like things and it was COVERED in graffiti. All the furniture down the alley was milk crates to be used as you please. We found our own crates outside of a place called Hells Upstairs. It was awesome. I had the BEST bagel sandwich of my life. NO JOKE.
I dont think we could find that place again if we tried.
After that we walked down to the Yarra river and saw some cool art down there, nothing was overdone or overly modern or trying to hard to fit some kind of standard. Everything seemed to be just where it belonged. While we were down there Jenah said "Melbourne is just so cool. It's not trying to be anything it isn't, it's just like 'Im Melbourne, whatever'". It was so true.
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