Our Christmas this year was slightly different to the norm, as it didn’t feel even remotely festive during the few weeks leading up to 25th December. The Wednesday before Christmas we pulled ourselves out of bed following an early evening nap (hey, it’s tiring sightseeing all day!) to visit the Queen Victoria Night Markets, which did not disappoint! We sampled sangria while wandering around the vintage clothes stalls, smelling the variety of different food stalls (from Greek food- there’s a large Greek community in Melbourne- to Asian food and many cultures besides!) as well as peering at the little stalls selling works from local artists. Amazingly, it also had great live music, such as a retro kind of band, singing songs from the mid 20th century, as well as a more well known local band that just seemed to set up on the street randomly! They weren’t listed on the bill but they just chose a corner and went for it! The markets are also open in the day, selling more local produce and craft stalls, where we ‘treated’ ourselves to a near-daily $3.50 borek sandwich! In all, the markets were great for cheap, local and unique products, definitely a must see in Melbourne!

After we’d visited these markets for the umpteenth time on Christmas Eve, we embarked on a little Christmas Eve surprise that I’d planned, taking my inspiration from Jenny’s and my birthday one last year- a Christmas Eve treasure hunt! As we’d been feeling a bit down about having Christmas away from home for the first time and not even feeling Christmassy because of the weather, I thought it would be a fun activity to occupy ourselves! We ended up getting a great view of some Christmas decorations, eating Christmas themed donuts and arriving just in time to see the Christmas show in the casino, which was a free festive light and decoration exhibit, complete with moving decorations and songs!

Finally, we felt slightly in the mood for Christmas, and after a festive hot chocolate and red wine, we fell asleep hoping that Santa would be able to find us in Melbourne!

Thankfully, he did, and we celebrated Christmas with a BBQ on the roof of the hostel with everyone there. We took advantage of the free trams in Xmas day and took our long planned trip to the botanic gardens (complete with Rudolf-like red sunburn for me-oops!). Even though it didn’t feel like Christmas at all, it was a lovely day and not being home for Christmas is a small price to have to pay for having adventures the rest of the year round.

Two days later (after our second trip to the Ashes at the immense MCG on Boxing Day-there were 88,000 people there!), we embarked on our second organised tour with the same tour company as the Philip Island tour. After the slight disappointment of the first tour, we went in with lower expectations, and a lot more well prepared with snacks and drinks! This was the reverse Great Ocean Road tour (reverse because the longest part of the drive, usually reserved for the end of the day, was done at the start, in an attempt to ‘miss the crowds’ at the main attractions), which we set off for at 6:50am!

This tour, thankfully, completely exceeded our expectations and made up for the disappointment of the first tour! We started the day at the twelve apostles (there’s not 12, something like 7 I think?), before taking a small bush walk to the Gibson Steps, where there were crowds but nothing like we’d experienced on our previous tour! Even the bus breaking down couldn’t deter us, as it only took the driver 5 minutes to organise a new bus to be delivered and we were on our way again! We then visited Loch Ard Gorge, at which we also had plenty of time for a walk around the beach and to see the amazing rock structures in the sea. The reason I don’t usually like tours is that you don’t get enough time to properly see the sights, but the guide gave us a great amount of time at each stop, so we had at least an hour each time to explore and walk around. It was also an incredible day for the weather, at least in the early to mid 30s, so we were actually thankful to arrive next at the rainforest, just to get some shade for a while! We then stopped in a small town to seek out some wild koalas, sleeping in the trees, which was actually really exciting for us as we’d only ever seen koalas in wildlife parks and zoos so far! After a spectacular scenic drive (we stopped to take photos), with a view of the turquoise ocean, we stopped for dinner in Torquay (a famous surfing spot from where the founders of Ripcurl and Quicksilver hail) before the short drive back to Melbourne around 7pm.

Sadly for us, it was then time to leave Melbourne, and we had a 12 hour coach journey to contend with until we arrived in Sydney!

Highlights: the Great Ocean Road, more of the Q.V. markets.
Accomodation: Still in Melbourne Metro YHA, got more used to the teensy room!