It was a very emotional morning when we went to drop DARPA off - even more so as we appeared to be dropping her off at a graveyard for spaceships and there were no staff members around, all very strange. Nina rang up spaceships and they just told us to leave her there and drop the keys off in the letterbox. Not what we'd expected and a bit of an anti-climax to the DARPA adventure in all honesty. Having no staff members around also meant we were stuck in the arse end of nowhere in some industrial estate miles out of the city, pissing Nina off something rotten. We've discovered that when one of us is angry or pissed off the other is calm and rational, it works out pretty well really. Anyway we managed to get on a bus to the nearest train station where Nina was apoplectic to find out that we were going to have to get a MiKi and pay six dollars for the privilege since Melbourne council have decided that they will no longer sell single trip tickets, or at least are phasing them out. After trying to decide what we were going to do we ended up on the train - sans MiKi as the machine was handily broken - and got back to the city centre where we managed to not have to pay for a ticket, winning!

Since we were next to the visitor info centre we thought we should find out what exactly there is to do in Melbourne, so off we trotted and had a lovely conversation with a volunteer lady who was obsessed with cafes and marked about ten different ones on our map. Armed with that valuable information we went down to the Southbank to see what was going on there. The answer? Not much really, some good views of the city but it basically seemed to be waterfront bars for office workers, so we went back to the hostel to sort some food out.

Now Friday night was one of the most random I think I have ever experienced in my entire life. It began, as many nights do, with a phone call from Jackie, Nina's boyfriend's sister who she has never met and who lives near Melbourne. So it was decided that tonight was the night to meet the family. I dutifully went along and we ended up at a little bar in Chinatown called 'Fad'. It was awesome. Jackie and her boyfriend Danny were there, as was Jackie's cousin and a friend. We drank and danced and chatted and generally spent a standard evening hanging out. Now things started to get strange when Nina spoke to Michael's dad, who she has met in Esperance, who was coming to see us in town, by which point Jackie and Danny had left, apparently for a taxi, and Nina and I were just leaving the bar as it had closed. Now we were going to see Michael's dad who had just finished work, and with him, surprise surprise, was Jackie and Danny! It was decided that we would go back to Danny's house, which was 'near' the city. Now I know that distance in Australia is a much larger scale than home, but I'd still say a taxi ride of over an hour is a fair way away! And one costing $120 too, ouch. They actually live in Beveridge, the birthplace of Ned Kelly, so at least we got somewhere historical!

Anyway we got to Danny's house which had a sauna randomly standing in the living room, a disused hot tub and a crazy dog which was half poodle and half something else I can't remember. We then proceeded to eat a lot of deli food - meat, cheese, crackers etc, and I dragged myself off to bed about 4am, leaving the others to it. Upon awakening at 10am to the sound of Danny chopping wood, I went into the living room to find Nina and Jackie still up and on the red wine, it was a pretty funny sight in all honesty, although I was slightly perturbed as to how we were going to get back to the hostel as neither Danny nor Jackie were in a fit state to drive. Anyway Nina and Jackie went to bed and I wandered around, chatting to Danny and watching tv, when Danny decides to go to the local pub to get some food….in a golf buggy. I foolishly decided to go along, partially to ensure he didn't die on his way there and partially because I was starving. We had a drink and played a bit of pool after finding out the kitchen was closed for some refurbishing, then tootled back to the house, highly illegally, in the rain in a golf buggy. It was cold!

Nina and Jackie got up feeling like death and Jackie sent Nina and Phil out to get KFC. After eating our fill we were put on the train back to the hostel and an inviting bed. Sadly there was something poisonous in the KFC for me and I was up most of the night being sick, not a great end to the days and leaving me exhausted for the next day, bad times. Despite that (and my now hatred of KFC) it was a funny day or so and Nina was pleased to have met the family.

Sunday was a nice easy day, partially because I felt rubbish, and partially because it only involved trying to sort Nina a new wardrobe which basically meant I got to trail round the shops pointing out things I thought would look nice. We went to the Docklands first, which was OK, all new gentrification of the area, mainly good because there was a snow machine so we both felt very festive! I am going to be the most Christmassy person ever this year after only having half a Christmas last year! We also went to the old Victoria markets, which were good for fruit and veg, and had a huge meat hall (no jokes please) but the rest of the stuff was mainly tacky tat. All in all it was a successful day but we didn't get to see much of the city, a fact I remedied the very next day.
And lo! Monday was walking tour day for me and hair cut day for Nina. I was up and out quite early to get down to Federation Square in time and met my ever so slightly eccentric German tour guide, Ernie. He has lived in Melbourne for 60 years though so does have a good knowledge of the city. He was your typical grandad-type really, full of marginally inappropriate comments, a sprinkling of racism, lashings of 'Queensland and NSW are pants' remarks and with a wide range of knowledge ready and willing to share. That aside I had an enjoyable 4 hours - although my feet were feeling sore by the end. Need to toughen them up for New Zealand. There was just me and Ernie for the first half hour, then two latecomers rocked up so we had a nice little tour group going. One of the main things that struck me when Ernie was describing various buildings, was the symbolism that architects put into buildings, in particular the Eureka skydeck. From what I gathered the building is named after the Eureka uprising up in the Ballarat goldfields, where workers wanted more rights, particularly a right to vote, the building itself is blue and white because that is the colour of the Southern Cross flag, it has a big gold section on it as the fight was at the goldfields, and the red stripe down the front represents the blood spilt. So there you go, a very poor history and architecture lesson for you! We also visited the Princess theatre, which I understandably adored, it was so pretty, and apparently has a resident ghost that they always keep a seat free for - very Phantom of the Opera. I also finally found out why the Australian national colours are green and yellow rather than the colours of the flag - their national flower is the wattle (or mimosa) and it has yellow flowers. Wow I really am teaching you all something today. As you can tell I had a very informative walk!

Melbourne as a city is really quite pretty, it has a lot of little laneways with cafes and shops tucked down them, old Victorian arcades like Leeds with tall glass ceilings and mosaic floors, and hidden alleys chock full of some impressive graffiti. There was this one tea room which just looked spectacular, the cakes were like pieces of art, but the queue to get in was huge so I didn't have a taste. The last place we visited on the tour was a hotel with possibly the best view from a bathroom window I've ever seen. Now when I say window I meant that one wall of the bathroom was an entire window, offering a brilliant view of the city, but a very strange place to experience it! Granted there were cubicles so you're not weeing in full view, but still, a very peculiar experience.

Tuesday was another sightseeing day, although this time Nina came along so I had some more normal company for the day. We decided to spend a little time on the free shuttle bus as we had already experienced the delights of the free tram, our first stop for the day was the MCG, no sport on that day but we had a little wander round outside. Nothing exciting to report though really, all the action happens inside and we didn't go in. Instead we thought we'd continue on with the sports theme and trek over to the Rod Laver tennis centre where the Melbourne Open is held - I really picked a bad time of year to come visit Melbourne, only AFL is on and that isn't for me, despite the tight shorts 555.

We obviously decided we hadn't seen enough of Australia's ANZAC memorials so our next stop consisted of the Shrine of Remembrance. Now all jokes aside I really enjoyed our visit there as we actually got a guide, once again an old volunteer, this time called Brian, so learnt something useful about it rather than wandering around pretending to look like I know what I'm meant to be seeing. I much prefer a tour where I learn stuff otherwise I just don't take much notice of what's there. Once again this building was redolent with imagery and symbolism, there is an area at the back which is representative of the trenches of WWI which when the light shines at a specific time the shadow created along this line symbolizes moving from the dark shadow of war to the light of peace. Similarly upstairs at 11.11am on 11th November every year the sun shines through an aperture in the ceiling to light up the word 'love' on the commemoration stone. Unfortunately, this being Australia, they decided to use daylight savings some years later and now the stone is lit up at 12.11pm…woops!

Our tourist day was competed by a trip to the world's best museum, ACMI, or Australian Centre for the Moving Image. Now I thought it would like the museum in Bradford, and in some respects it was, but oh so much better. Now I'm not going to badmouth Bradford here, but this place had free computer games to sit and play on. Sonic, FIFA, pacman, the works. There was also loads of stuff about the Australian film industry and filmed interviews with Baz Luhrmann and costumes and everything, I was truly in my element and could have stayed for hours but Nina got bored so we went back to the hostel ready for our last day together *sniff*.

At this point it's probably prudent to mention that Nina isn't completing the rest of the trip with me and I'm going solo from New Zealand. The lucky thing has got herself a visa sponsorship and a boyfriend (not related) in Esperance so moves back there permanently. The thought of travelling by myself for the next few months is quite honestly a terrifying prospect but will hopefully increase my confidence in talking to new people and generally be a good learning curve.

So our last day was started in perfect fashion, for me at least, with a visit to the state library which had a free exhibition on the changing faces of Victoria (the state not the Queen as I first thought). This included Ned Kelly's armour - now I can't really understand the big love for Ned Kelly, at the end of the day he was a highwayman and killed and robbed people, but anyway it was interesting to see. I was more interested in the history of books though, there were manuscripts from the 13th century, old Bibles written on vellum with remarkable calligraphy and drawings, right up to more modern day Penguin classics. Just my kind of exhibition. The main draw of the library was, however, the reading room. I was awestruck and wish I'd have had that kind of space at University when I was writing all my essays. It just had a great atmosphere, and was beautiful to boot with a huge domed roof, shelves loaded with books and little ladders to reach them all the way around, and balconies carrying the exhibitions. All very beauty and the beast. Loved it is probably an understatement. Over the road from the library is the old shot tower, where they used to make lead shot for shotguns by dropping little balls of molten lead from a great height into tubs full of sand. Very technical! As it was a protected building they have done what every self-respecting Western country would do and built a mall around it, replete with big clock that plays a funny song and has some slightly creepy statues moving around on the hour. We had decided early on in the day that we wanted cake since we had seen some delicious ones earlier in the week. Well b***** me if we could find any of these shops that afternoon! We walked around for about half an hour getting increasingly frustrated as cake was out of reach, Nina had a craving for carrot cake so we had specific cake in mind making the task that little more difficult, but finally, FINALLY, found a little Italian down one of the side streets which had some mouth-watering cakes in the window. We almost ran in, but composed ourselves before ordering our glass of wine and cake - carrot and orange for Nina and chocolate for me. Well, they turned up and the slices were roughly quarter of a cake, about 5 inches tall and covered in oodles of topping. Now the waiter had warned us that they were large pieces, but we hadn't quite grasped the enormity of the slices until they were in front of us. Not to be deterred, and having had breakfast 6 hours ago, we bravely fought with the cakes until they at least looked like we had tried to make a dent in them. There was so much left they could probably have sold it as another portion. We both felt like we were carrying footballs around in our stomachs afterwards, but man was it worth it, my cake had 2 layers of chocolate sponge sandwiched with a kind of honeycomby meringue and chocolate mousse and topped with ganache, talk about heaven. Plus 2 truffles on the top - I felt bad leaving one but couldn't physically fit more in.

To celebrate our last evening together and the end of my trip as part of a duo we went, surprise surprise, out for tea. We had heard about the Italian area of Melbourne which was just a ten minute walk North of our hostel so off to find Lygon street we went. When we got there there were loads of restaurants to choose from but sadly none doing my personal favourite Italian delicacy, mozzarella Milanese. I mean, isn't a big chunk of fried cheese what all Italians eat? The restaurant we ended up at was OK, we got some free bruschetta and a free glass of wine so at least got some freebies. I thought the lasagne was lovely - we had been craving it for days and it hit a spot - but I have had better. The main disappointment was the trio of dips we got as a shared starter, tzatziki, good, aubergine dip, fine, hummus, tasted of bubblegum. Seriously, bubblegum, how do you make chickpeas and garlic taste like bubblegum? Nina asked the waiter what was in it and he said it was a secret recipe and the Boss wouldn't even tell them. To be honest I dread to think what was in it to give it that flavour! That aside it was a pleasant evening ending in an early night as Nina had to be up at ridiculous o clock to get her flight.

So off Nina went in the early hours, leaving me alone for the next few months, after a week with extended family to mentally prepare!

Becca