We took the overnight bus to Melbourne and spent the day sightseeing and very quickly felt at home and loved Melby! We stayed at a very hospitable family that a friend of a friend (thanks Judith!!) was staying with whilst she was doing her medical elective in Melbourne! They completely took us in, offered us clean towels and everything so we were two happy girls :) Again, for the end of Peach, we were completely welcomed in by the Melbourne Jewish community and had lots of really great meals from lots of really hospitable families.

At the end of Pesach, in true North West London jews style, we did a bread crawl through the kosher bakers along what we thought was the 'Golders Green" equivelent in Melbourne! We're slightly ashamed that we bought something in every shop...oops!

After pesach, we moved into a hostel in St Kilda (apparantly the red light district but we found it to be really nice!!) and spent Friday in the City again. Friday night saw another installment of meat and a lovely walk past a few prostitutes on the stroll back the hostel...always delightful! We spent shabbat staring at the lovely cake shops in the area (window browsing only...of course!) and also wondered to the park where the Melbourne Grand Prix is held every year.

The Comedy Festival was running in Melbourne so on Saturday night we booked tickets to see Mark Watson with the Melbourne Jew crew! After his show, which we found very funny but wern't sure that the ozzies we were with found it quite as amusing, we went to another comedy show at a place a bit like the Comedy Store in London and saw 5 stand up acts which were great and continued on until the early hours of the morning....perfect timing to head back to one of the boys houses to watch the FA Cup Semi Final...ok...so not a great result but was good to be able to watch some live football!

Sunday was a mad packed day for us as we tried to fit in as many of the sights of Melbourne and activities as possible! We headed along the St Kilda Esplanade early in the morning to wonder through the weekly market, then raced to the Jewish Museum (I, alis, got to find out lots of stuff about the boat that my grandpa was sent to Australia on from Britain in the 1940's...really interesting!) and then made it to the MCG stadium to watch an AFL game! We very quickly decided which team to support - The Richmond Tigers, which wasn't too much of a hard decision as we were watching two of the worst teams in the league! After about 10 minutes of not having a club what was going on, we asked some lovely people who were sitting next to us to explain the rules which really helped us to enjoy the game :) The stadium was amazing, the fans of both teams sit together and you are allowed to leave the stadium at half time and come back in for the rest of the game....not quite like going to The Emirates but the atmosphere was great and we're now devoted AFL fans! After the game, we attemped to make our way into the private lounge in the Sofitel Hotel as we were told the views over the city were spectacular from that hotel but were promptly stopped by a lovely lady who worked there and demanded to know our room number...there was no quick thinking and we soon found ourselves out of the luxurious hotel and back onto the streets of Melbourne! Instead, we made our way to the Eureka Skytower and duly paid the entrance fee to go to the top of the tower to see the Melbourne skyline at sunset!