Australian Adventures: Melbourne & Sydney

MELBOURNE

Was our favorite big city that we visited. I have never seen so much hustle and bustle before in my life. The city makes Toronto seem lightly populated! Nikki and I found that when in Melbourne, when we set out to see something, we would become distracted by other things along the way (a historical building, entertainment on the street, little streets that were gems and so much more!). There is SO much to see and do in Melbourne. The buildings range from historic to super modern and I wasn't aware just how exciting and multicultural the city (and Australia!) is!

 This is the hostel that we stayed in while visiting Melbourne. We stayed in a 6 dorm room (3 bunk beds) for 2 nights here. This was our first hostel experience! It was a good hostel: clean and room to leave our luggage out plus individual showers! The only downfall was that we had to carry our 20kg luggage up 3 flights of stairs because there was no lift! (elevators are "lifts" in Australia!). I liked the historic feel to this hostel because our following hostels were mostly modern.

On our first day of exploring Melbourne, we went up the Eureka Skydeck for some views of Melbourne from the sky. We could see from so far up just how large the city is... it extends SO far!

We went to the Queen Victoria Market twice for souvenirs... They also sell food as you can see from the picture.. we did not try kangaroo... we just wanted to pet one...

 We visited the Aquarium on the 2nd day and it absolutely exceeded our expectations. The penguins were the highlight... I would have been satisfied with them alone! What a cute yet awkward animal to watch! But we went on to see many ugly ugly creatures of the deep sea and sharks, sting rays, and jelly fish.

This picture shows that in replacement of the red flashing hand that we have on our street walking signs here, Australia has a red man... This man means don't walk, but I think the only give away is that his colour is red!

This is the Flinders Street Station in Melbourne. It's the train station, and its beautiful! In front of this building is the busiest intersection ever!! I took a 30 second video of swarms of people crossing the street and only about 2 people noticed!

We discovered Pie Face (a meat pie chain of stores that were in almost all the cities we visited!) early in our trip. We noticed that Australian foods are inspired by British style foods.. meat pies, mashed potatoes and gravy and fish and chips! We ate several meat pies on our journey including this chicken and mushroom one!! SO DELIC! Our favorite was definitely the meat pie with the mashed potatoes on top!

After a night at the bar (a techno bar that our roommate wanted to go to... which was actually quite fun!) we hung out in the hallway of our hostel, continuing along with our night... and we thought it would be a good idea to take out each of currencies from where we're from to compare!! I really liked this idea!! We had a roommate from Japan and a roommate from Germany so we put together Yen, Euros, and Canadian monies!! It made me very excited because it felt like such a coming-together of cultures :)


SYDNEY

We did quite a lot when visiting Sydney! Actually we did quite a lot in all of the cities that we visited, especially considering we had 2 nights/3 days in each city! The highlights of Sydney were the Botanical gardens (I usually am not a big garden person.. but this took my breath away!), and the famous Bondi beach... oh and I shouldn't forget trying my first Tim Tam!!! (An Australian chocolate covered cookie... SO GOOD!!!). Also noteworthy were seeing the opera house, the Rocks, and Sydney Bridge...

Our hostel in Sydney was Wake Up! It was our 2nd favorite hostel (we liked one in the Blue Mountains a bit better) because it was spacious, new, clean and there was a lot of energetic friendly people staying here when we stayed here. There was also a restaurant/bar downstairs with inexpensive supper and was really busy at night (despite the fact that it was a Monday night). It was also right beside the train station, which comes in handy for me and Nikki since we're not really light travelers! We stayed in a 10 person dorm, which we were uncertain about at first, but it ended up being a lot of fun and a good way to be social!

This picture is from the botanical gardens in Sydney. There were SO many bats flying in the trees. I think someone we spoke to in Australia called them fruit bats. They are much bigger than the ones that I have seen at night at home. The botanical gardens was beautiful! And its paths led us right to the Sydney Opera House!

Nikki and I with the Opera House in the background! (I had to show a picture of the Opera House after-all right?)

On the same day we visited the botanical gardens, we took a Sydney Ferry over to Manly beach. this particular excursion was recommended to us so we got our tickets and went for it. Manly beach was beautiful! It was my first glimpse at Australian surfing (mostly done in wet suits because it was pretty cold). Swim suits would have been too cold, but it was a nice day to take off our flip slops, walk along the beach and do some people watching!

The day that we chose to walk across the Sydney Harbour bridge was the only day that it rained in our 3 weeks in Australia (aside from our last day!). And the funny thing is that it rained pretty much only for the duration of tie it took to cross the bridge (an hour or so). We still roughed it and made it across because we made it our mission! We got some nice pictures out of it and a look at Sydney from a different angle!

Earlier in the day before crossing the Sydney Harbour Bridge, we visited The Rocks in Sydney. It was basically like an outdoor museum with historical information posted on the outside of buildings. This walk-way alley that I'm standing in here had information about the prisoners that were brought from England (or maybe from all over Britain?) and lived in this area of Sydney. This area of the Rocks was once the slums because of the people - the prisoners - who lived in the area. There was also a free museum that gave lots of information about the Rocks. Its really weird that such a cute little part of the city (with little cafes along the stone walkways) was once the slums!

And of course Sydney is when we were introduced to Tim Tams. One of the guys that we met at the hostel (who was from Toronto) pretty much forced us to purchase some on our way to Bondi beach, and this picture documents our first taste of our snack of love for the full 3 weeks that we were in Australia. We ate SO many Tim Tams! I brought some home for my family to try too!

The day we went to Bondi Beach was a bit chilly. It was definitely worthwhile taking the bus down though to see the beauty and do the walk along the rocks. We went with these two dudes: Carey and Mark... both Canadians who were also staying at our hostel! There was a lady doing some exercise that looked like Zumba on the beach too. Apparently in the summer, this is the beach that beautiful people go to be seen, so perhaps she was practicing her moves to get noticed for next season. This was our last day in Sydney and after catching some lunch, we caught our bus and Nikki and I had to run back to our hostel so as to not miss our train to Byron Bay! (We got there with 15 minutes to spare and were informed it was delayed... sometimes things just work out!)