Day 91 Tuesday 8th December 2009

Johno says

The 'Taxi Driver' starring De Niro and a couple of chick flicks for Stace later and we had arrived into Melbourne airport and greeted by a wagging tailed sniffer dog. Amazingly, after months of communicating by hand signals and drawing pictures we were in a place where communication was not a problem, traffic is at a normal controlled pace, police actually police the society… and (unfortunately) beers and food are at their normal high prices. It was completely like landing at Heathrow but with possibly tighter passport controls, it was a little rainy outside and the cab was tallying up to quite a sum before it made its way through to our hotel in the morning rush hour. Our lonely planet book was clearly going to be a big job to read with so much to see and do in Melbourne, the travel centres were stashed with tours going to here, there and everywhere so we decided to collapse into our back packer hostel for a few well needed hours of rest. The hostel was offering us something quite a bit different to the quality hotels in Asia as we now have shared showers and common rooms!! After a sleep we went for a stroll around Melbourne and noticed a few interesting things to tick off whilst we are here. Then we had our free pasta dinner in the hostel set up a bit like School dinners (which we managed to get to the front of the queue as I had helped out the chef carrying the huge pasta dish through the kitchen area!) we walked around Coles supermarket and stocked up on a few things and retired to the common room and TV room for some light entertainment. During the night someone had decorated our doorway with some sick, didn't hear a thing tho so all was not lost… nice!! Poor cleaners.

Day 92 Wednesday 9th December 2009

Stacey says

Our plan for today was to explore Melbourne city. So we walked over to Federation Square, which had a huge information service desk. 20 minutes and a 1000 maps later, after having spoke with the helpful little old lady, we had our day and the Great Ocean Road trip all figured out. We got onto the tourist bus, which travels around the whole city in about 90 minutes, it was very informative and helped us get our bearings. We went see the Melbourne Cricket ground, Etihad Stadium, which holds the city's big events, the Docklands, Botanic Gardens, National Galleries and the usual sorts.. Finishing up in South Bank, where we alighted, and went to the Eureka Sky Tower, its 88 floors up and is part residential and part business offices, only 3 years old. It was an impressive view of the city. Its got a mixture of old Victorian architecture and cutting edge modern buildings. I noticed everyone walks around with jumpers and raincoats to the ready, it really can get pretty chilly, after an hour of intense sunshine, then it decides to pour with rain. So after lunch and a little walkabout, we rested for a bit in the hostel. Before heading out to the Queen Victoria Night Market, Suzuki Night. It looked huge when we drove past it earlier. But on this night they don't open it up wholly, just part of it, which are all kinds of food and drink outlets, cuisines from around the world. With a live band on a centre stage. Very festival like, with loads of people sitting around drinking and catching up after work! We then bumped into a travel buddy we met on the Laos crossing, which had been very roughly arranged last minute, but Ryan managed to find us, so some beers were had before heading to bed!