After working at the cafe for a few weeks my bank account was starting to look a little healthier and so I decided to make a start on the Melbourne 'bucket list' I had created. It contains all of the things I have discovered and would like to do and some other things that people have recommended me to do here in town.

But...we're still going to do free things too! One afternoon when the weather had finally cleared up and it wasn't so cold out I decided to take a walk around Melbourne Botanical Gardens. To get there you can walk across the Princes Bridge and then through the Queen Victoria Gardens which has a big statue of the old Queen herself right by the music venue in the park. Leading on from the Queen Victoria gardens is an area called Kings Domain. In this area there is a building called The Shrine of Remembrance, Now, not meaning to be disrespectful in any way, this building looked a little eerie like it was pulled straight out of Ghostbusters with some dark clouds hovering over the top! The inside however was wonderful, it even had a museum at the bottom which tells you all about how Australia was affected in WW2 and had a big display case of Australian Military Medals. I then proceeded to walk down past the Observatory and into the Botanical gardens. They were lovely. I will admit once again that these are probably best visited in Spring or Summer rather than Winter but everything was still nice and green. I took the opportunity to go into their cafe near the lake and have a Devonshire Tea...tastes nothing like it does at home. But then again when you're travelling when does anything?

One of the things which is a bit hit and miss about travelling is some of the people you meet. There are nice, fun people and then there are the weird antisocial kind. It is due to a very strange lady that checked into our room that I got to meet 3 very nice people. Josie who is a German Lass heading back home in a few days and Ben and Rich. Two English guys travelling around Australia and then heading over to SE Asia (the way I apparently 'should have' done it lol). Rich works as a concierge in a hotel and weirdly Ben is a chef. It was Ben who suggested that the 3 of us (Rich had to work) go on a mini pub crawl round Melbourne. And thus comes the story of my first night out in town lol. Ben was late...but once he had finally arrived we hit the town and ended up in a little bar called The Workshop which is above the shops on Elizabeth Street. Nice little place with lanterns and lights, for some reason playing an episode of Ren and Stimpy on the ceiling ho hum lol. (If you remember that cartoon that is!) We then ventured onto one of Melbourne,s popular rooftop bars, which would have been great except it was raining! The last two bars of the evening were a little weird but I put it down to Melbourne being so 'Cosmopolitan' lol. The first was this little place we wandered into by accident called Ferdyderke. It had a DJ who wore a smart suit, something reminiscent of the 1960's and all his tunes were using vinyl! Then we got free mini hotdogs (always a bonus when drinking) before I met the strangest guy. A guy dressed like someone's Granddad told me he was more attracted to me after he discovered I was drinking Hendricks...erm...thanks isn't it past your bedtime? The other weird bar of the night which I cannot tell you it's name as I don't know was a bar which modelled itself on a mental asylum. It had hospital beds in the toilets and doctors lamps hanging from the walls, it was quite a nice place apart from the fact we paid $10 to get into an empty bar and all the 'cocktails' tasted like paint stripper! I do jest though, it was a good night out and hope to see them both again.

The following day despite being really tired I went to an AFL game with Ryan and then onto the most dodgy Chinese restaurant ever! It was called the Shanghai Dumpling House. Rumoured to have great food but terrible service. Well...the terrible service was correct as we never got all the food at the same time, I had someone elses' and then oh yes...I got sick from the food! NNOOOOO!!!!! It was so nice and tasted so good at the time! Oh and tonight we discovered why Collingwood supporters are called Ferrals!

Later in the week after recovering from a small bout of food poisoning I decided to go and see one of Melbourne's main attractions. The Eureka Tower and Sky Deck. The Sky Deck is on the 88th floor of the tower and to get there you take a lift which they like to tell your takes 38 seconds to get to it. They're really not kidding and I do not think a lift should ever need to go that fast! Once at the top you can walk around the viewing area and peer through the little Kaleidoscope style telecopes at various points of Melbourne. It was actually a very clear weather day so you could see out as far as the Dandenong Ranges. There is also a chance to go on what they called 'The Edge' experience. This is a 3m glass box which hangs out of the side of the building so you can see all around you and directly down. Not being a fan of heights I thought how bad could it be? 4 seconds in and I was crapping myself to the amusement of the other people in that box with me. After that shock I returned to earth in the speedy lift and then came back again later on to see Melbourne at night, you really can see how far out it stretches into the distance.

The last little snippet of this entry (as it's getting rather long!) covers another weird night out with Ben where we both had no intention of staying out till 3am let alone drinking as much as we did. This time though I made it to the fireworks down at the docklands. Each Friday night throughout July and August Melbourne has had fireworks on at the docklands to celebrate some winter festival. I took Ben with me and they were great considering they were free. Our only concern seemed to be the peculiar show on afterwards which looked like a bunch of midgets inside blow up balls doing acrobatics on pole vault poles? Bit of a random description there for you! We ended up in town having dinner quite late and I sat there looking amused at him telling me that he hates people just like us who stroll into the restaurant not long before closing and order dinner!

This kind of rounds off some of the random things I have done in the last couple of weeks in Melbourne!

The picture is me in the bar at the sky deck (with coffee at this point...wine came later!)