I’ve just gotten back from a 2 week venture to Melbourne and New Zealand over the Australian Easter holidays. The trip was fantastic. We stayed in hostels and drove all around the North Island in New Zealand. I’ll try and sum up a few of the highlights over the next couple blog posts but I most definitely will not be able to get everything in. Another quick note, I am waiting on some necessary equipment to move some pictures onto my computer, so after that has happened I’ll update this with some relevant photos :)
Melbourne
Our trip started out with an early, 11 hour train ride from Adelaide to Melbourne. We figured that seeing the Australian landscape by train would be a good beginning to our adventure. We had a nice chat with the nun that we were sitting beside, and ran though the pouring rain to Spencer Backpackers where we’d spend the next few nights.
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| Cool undulating roof design in the Melbourne train station |
I’m not sure if you guys are familiar with hostels, but this was my first ever encounter with them. I don’t know what exactly I was expecting, but I discovered that over the next couple of weeks I’d be staying in rooms filled with bunk beds, with huge common kitchens and tv rooms. Altogether not too bad, and a really great way to meet people. I would definitely consider hosteling for future voyages.
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| First hostel stay :) |
The next day was mostly spent wandering around the city. We went to Federation Square, Flinders Station, hopped the free City Circle tram to the harbour to check out the People’s Flea Market and do some shopping at Harbour Town, then had dinner at Maccaroni, an amazing little Italian restaurant on Metcalfe, off Collins St. After a few drinks on our hostel’s patio with a Korean guy and a German guy, we set out for Sorry Grandma! A club on Little Bourke that likes to put googley eyes on paintings and has a popcorn maker in the upstairs bar. The club was pretty sweet and we met some really nice guys that ended up inviting us out to the footy game the next day.
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| Flinders Station |
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| People's Flea Market at the Docklands. Entirely made of shipping containers. |
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| Harbour town for some outlet shopping |
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| Amazing dinner at Maccaroni |
After Easter Mass, we made our way to the Etihad Stadium to watch the St. Kilda Saints beat the Gold Coast Suns. We all were starving after the game, so headed back with the guys for some left-over chinese food and a couple of drinking games. After several attempts at finding a good place to go out and a couple rounds of Kings, we decided to call it a night.
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| Little kids playing in the oval at halftime |
Melbourne day 4 was spent doing a design walk of the city, at the Aquarium and up on the 88th floor of the Eureka tower, the tallest building in the Southern hemisphere.
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| Penguins at the Aquarium |
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| Eureka Tower (Gold one!) |
For our last night in Melbourne we decided to stay at Hotel Discovery, another backpacker’s place. It was a pretty big place, with murals in the common areas and a really cheap, really good cafe in the lobby.
For our last day we decided to start off at Victoria Market, where you can get local wares as well as fruits and veggies. It was huge and a really cool place to shop. Next we headed over the the NGV: Ian Potter building to check out some Australian art before we took a walk through the Botanical Gardens to see the massive War Memorial.
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| Climbing sculpture at the botanical gardens |
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| Sit in the lawn chairs and play Pac-man on the big screen in Federation Square |
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| War Memorial |
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| It's gigantic |
One of the guys we had met in Melbourne happened to be flying out around the same time as us, so we met up at the airport bar to kill some time, then parted our ways and headed off to continue our adventures in New Zealand.
