Sooo, Melbourne came, and Melbournes gone!

We hope everyone is doing well, and again sorry its taken a while to get this post up, a combination of always seemingly doing something and having our friend Cammy come down to meet us for the two weeks we were in Melbourne meant we didn't get around to posting until now, but we hope you all like our update.

So we arrived down in Melbourne on Friday 16th Jan after our few days in the Gold Coast, and after a few wrong turns managed to find our apartment in the Docklands area of the city. Soon joined by our friend Cam, we were well set for the show to carry on!

Melbourne is such a cool place, really our favourite of Australia so far - more relaxed and accessible than Sydney, free trams around the city, bustling streets with suprises around every corner, a really relaxed and cool feel, beautiful weather... and good food and drink to go with it - oh, and not to mention the array of HUGE stadiums like the MCG and the tennis park! It has been voted the best city to live in many times, and after spending time here we all agreed that it deserves the title - there is just something about the place which feels awesome - and yes, partly because we were there of course. And no, before anyone asks... we didn't get to the Neighbours road (we shed a few tears at that one!). Everywhere you go in Melbourne, there seems to be something going on, and especially when the Australia Open tennis is on its all about the lying in the sun with a beer and a big screen.

Anyways, wel tell you about some of the highlights and funky stuff that went on:

- Death... no seriously guys, someone actually died in the apartment block we were staying in, on the night we arrived. Waking up to camera crews and police on the first day in a new place was all a bit sad and strange. Were not sure how the lady passed away.

- Trams. So basically all the trams are free, and we spent many an hour wondering around on them whilst Cam played with his new GoPro and kept insisting on sticking it out of the window (weirdo).

- Melbourne Zoo - now this place was coooooool, although we didnt get to hold Koalas. We did however discern that Cam belonged with the Urangatang sanctuary, and enjoyed his many impressons (both sober and drunk!) through the time we was with us! Lots of awesome animals, including a snow lepard and a platypus - what a weird little thing that is. We also saw a Phillipine's crocodile, the rarest crocodile in the world. Definitely recommend this place!

- Australia Open. Watching an Aussie play with the support of 25,000 roaring home fans was a blast. As was the corporate seats, 5 rows back from court, we snuck into for almost 2 hours without getting caught. The beers went down far too well and it was a class, class night out!

- Cricket at the MCG. The biggest cricket stadium in the world and we had sooo much fun. Felt sorry for the seagul that got ko'd by the cricket ball, but he shook it off and came back on silly point to the delight of the roaring crowd! Great night out again.

- Ok so we may have ended up wrestling in the huge casino after one too many on the Saturday we got there, and may have almost fell asleep on the grass given our refusal to walk home. What? I mean, it was pretty far to walk and all that. Aparently i kicked Cam in the face, accidentally of course :P

- Melbourne Museum. This place was AMAZING. Bruce and I went for the afternoon, and i actually think it is the best museum i have ever been to. So so so many exhibitions, some of which are just huge and you could easily spend a whole day or more walking around. The huge section on bugs, with live massive spiders and other weird and totally unecessary insects may have made us crawl a little. But did you know, there are 150,000,000 insects for every human on earth... yeah, we shuddered at that one too. Amazing exhibitions on the human body, our minds, WW1, space, the earth evolution, and countless others we didnt manage to get around.

- Chin Chins: John Torode's prodigee's asian restaurant. Best. Asian. Ever. go here if you like food, just any food, because it is that amazing.

- Melbourne Library. Spent an hour walking around the famous atrium inside this library - massive, and really impressive. We saw the actual armour of Ned Kelly, and learned why everything in Australia is called Flinders (literally, everything) - after Matthew Flinders the famous English Voyager and navigator, who was the first person to circumnavigate all of Australia and identify it as a continent. They love him over here.

- Jellyfish EVERYWHERE - so in the docklands where we were staying, we found out that amongst the millions of pounds yots docked, were thousands and thousands of Jellyfish... you really dont want to fall in those waters thats for sure.

As we mentioned above, we had our friend Cammy join us for this leg of the tour. It is worth just chucking in his obsession in asian food (which we ate almost every day) as well as his new found love of all things GoPro... if we could, we GoPro'd it. Every time we went for food we had Cam in tow, with his GoPro, saying 'a nice asian would be good'.

We also managed to get to some really cool bars, including an awesome rooftop bar overlooking the entire Melbourne skyline.

All in all it was an amazing and funny 10 days with so many stories and lots of memories to take away. Definitely our favourite period in Australia, and much a very chilled time as we get ready for our massive 2000 mile drive to go dive with some great white sharks.

We hope everyone is keeping warm and staying safe, and we hope to hear from you guys soon!

Big love as always

Bruce and Ash

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