Leave always wanting more...

After work on Friday, we came home and cooked a nice dinner and chilled out a bit. We needed to go to bed early as our flight to Melbourne left at 6:20 am the next day! Ellyn had checked the bus schedule the night before and saw there were two buses that left our bus stop at 5:05 am. So up and at ‘em early it was! As we walked to the bus stop right about 5, we saw a bus pulling off. No worries…there should another one right after this. So we wait…and wait…and wait. At 5:30am and after about 10 mins of John whining about waiting on public transportation, we decided to catch a cab. (Luckily Ellyn had checked us in online the day before and given the relaxed security measures when flying in Australia, we had plenty of time.)

We board the plane, get all settled and notice two chatty women sitting behind us talking about their day of shopping in Melbourne. Well, isn’t that just lovely but can you keep it down? It is not even 6:30 in the morning on a SATURDAY! Apparently, they were really excited to be travelling away from their husbands and kids for a day of shopping in Melbourne and judging by the amount they chatted, they had not done this in ages. They talked the entire time. Thankfully, we were able to catch a bit of sleep though.

We caught the Skybus into Melbourne and went straight to our accommodation. The location was perfect – just down the street from Southern Cross Station (where we catch the bus to the airport), a few blocks from Federation Square and right in the heart of the CBD. We dropped off our bags and headed out on the town! We walked straight to breakfast in one of the Melbourne’s laneways. (The city is full of little alleys that have been embraced by the city with little shops, cafes, bars, art galleries, etc. There are also some alleys with the walls covered with graffiti, most good enough to be classified as art!) We each got the traditional Big Brekkie (huge toast, eggs, bacon, spinach, mushrooms and tomatoes) and John branched out and added baked beans to his! After breakfast, we headed to Federation Square, the heart of downtown Melbourne! (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rpI2BX5nr8k) After a quick walk around and stroll along the Yarra River, we went into the Visitor’s Center to pick up some maps and see if there was anything we wanted to do. (Ellyn did not plan a whole lot, just a few things, as Melbourne is more about the atmosphere, as opposed to sight seeing.) We walked around to see a few more laneways (and have John “grope” some of the artwork on Hosier Lane).

Then we hopped on the City Tram. It takes you around the city with commentary about various areas/sights. We rode for a while before deciding to get off and walk to the Queen Victoria Markets – the largest outdoor market in the Southern Hemisphere (you’ll notice there are a lot of “largest in the Southern Hemisphere” in this blog…we decided its because there’s not much competition!). We wandered through the market but only made one purchase – gear (scarves and hats) for the footy game that night! Given that our Adelaide Crows were knocked out of the finals, we needed a new team to support. We were going to watch the Sydney Swans and the Western Bulldogs that evening. The Swans beat the Crows the week before so we decided we should pull for them because they obviously were really good if they could beat our Crows!!

We got back on the tram and headed to Brunswick, the artsy district. We just walked around, did some people watching and window-shopping. Ellyn then decided she was tired of window-shopping and wanted to do some real shopping! But the first store we went in, she bought nothing and John bought a new pair of shoes! We were looking around for a neat place to have a drink but we think we were surrounded by a lot of hungover people as they all looked very “artsy” and were drinking a lot of coffee (though most Australians drink heaps of coffee at all times of the day). As we started back towards the city, we stopped in one last store. As Ellyn was looking around, John had a brilliant idea – we should each pick out a hat for the other one and where it for the rest of the weekend! Awesome! As we started picking out hats for the other, we realized we were picking out totally ridiculous hats just for fun. So we decided we each were allowed to pick out our own, with the others approval, of course! We felt very stylish in our snazzy hats!

We decided to walk back to the heart city to get some exercise and take in more sights. We stopped to check out a huge cathedral but did not go inside as there was a wedding taking place. As we were wandering through the city, we saw a James Squire Brew House. This has been one of our favourite beers, so we decided we just had to go in! We ordered some news beers we had not previously tried and some wedges with sour cream and sweet chilli sauce. We found seating in a great spot – two bar stools sitting in front of a large open window overlooking the street. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iMTil_mlWIM) We did have a man who had been “over served” stop and talk to us. It was a bit comical at first but quickly became annoying. John politely asked him to leave and surprisingly, there were no issues – he started walking! We then decided to go to a place overlooking the Yarra River with a rooftop bar. Unfortunately, the rooftop bar was closed until the evening (maybe we were too early for drinks…) so we went back to the first floor which was packed (obviously we aren’t too early!). We grabbed a drink and seat to just take it all in. After a drink though, we had to head back to the room to get changed for the footy game!

We hopped on the tram and headed to the Melbourne Cricket Grounds – a HUGE stadium that seats close to 100,000 and is in the parklands just on the edge of the CBD. We wanted to make sure we got there early as this was a big game and we wanted to be seated and ready to cheer our team on when the whistle blew!

Ellyn and John in front of the MCG with our Sydney Swans gear! (Sorry its so dark...we had the camera on the wrong setting!)

We also decided we needed to do the footy game Aussie style and place money on the outcome. (Australians bet on just about anything…sports, the elections, Dancing with the Stars, etc. It’s crazy!) We waited in line and tried to figure out how to work the TAB machine to place our bet. We kept letting people go in front of us so we could watch them and see what they were doing, under the premise that we were still deciding on our odds. Ha-ha! Then Ellyn decided it would just be easier to ask someone so we went to the man that was running the TAB booth and explained we were new to all this and so he walked us through the process. Ellyn convinced John of a reasonable sum to bet and we decided, since we weren’t overly familiar with the teams, we should just go with a pretty big window. So we bet the Swans win by 39. We head into the stadium and found our seats (interestingly enough, right in front of another group that included at least one American but she was an annoying American with a bad accent – we won’t state the are of the country the accent was from so as not to offend any readers!).

The first half of the game was amazing! The Swans were doing great; we were cheering along with fellow Swan supporters (we’re sure our Swans gear helped us feel included) and even started our own Swans cheers! We were up by so much at half time that Ellyn started getting nervous that we might win by more than 39 points! Unfortunately for us, the second half was not as thrilling. Though a great game, the Bulldogs slowly started to come back and the Swans just couldn’t keep up. We ended up loosing the game (and our money!) and headed back to the hotel, but not before stopping to get Ellyn a sausage roll – so yummy! (And so bad for you!). We were exhausted from getting up so early (and a little depressed by our team losing…).

We got up Sunday morning and rode the tram out to St. Kilda, a beachside suburb of Melbourne. We walked around a bit to see our breakfast options and get our bearings of the area. There are bakeries that line the street and their windows were literally filled with goodies. Ellyn thought these looked like great breakfast options but John wanted a “real breakfast” and then something from the bakeries for “desert”. So we found a place for a “real breakfast” and were able to get a table outside, right in the middle of things! After a delicious breakfast, we walked around St. Kilda a bit more (just to make room for what was next!) before heading to the bakeries! We wandered through the community gardens which were really cool - residents of the town could get a small plot of land and plant a little garden. So even if you lived in an apartment or townhouse, you could still have a garden!

John said Ellyn should decide which one she liked best. Not a good idea! It literally took her 15 minutes and multiple times of looking at the goodies in each window before she finally settled on one!

We ate our yummy breakfast desserts in the small bakery before heading to Luna Park. It is an old, traditional amusement park right on the beach. We did not ride any of the rides (Ellyn thought they looked a bit rickety), but just wandered through taking in the scene. Since it was Sunday, St. Kilda had their market set up along the Esplanade. We slowly strolled through the market on our way to the pier. Although the wind was really blowing and on the beach it was quite cold, we walked out to the end of the pier so we could get a good view of St. Kilda as well as Melbourne in the distance.

We then caught the tram back to the city so we could catch a train to Windsor. (By the way, the public transportation in Melbourne is awesome…always on time, frequent pickups and very clean.) Knowing how much John loved lawn bowls last time he was here, Ellyn had set up for them to play lawn bowls at the oldest bowling club in Australia! We arrived and were given a quick lesson about bowls (John didn’t need this but Ellyn most definitely did!) and purchased a few beers at the bar before heading out on the greens. There was only one other group playing so it felt like we had the place to ourselves! (It should be noted that we were the youngest people in the club by at least 40 years and definitely got some interesting looks as we walked in.) A national lawn bowling coach was also hanging around the club and came over to give us some pointers (that really worked!). We had another club member keep coming over to chat to us and tell us jokes. As he was talking to us and telling stories, he would say something like, “We were driving, let me put this in your terms, about 20 kilometers”. Really?! The USA? Kilometres? We appreciated the effort but wanted to explain to him that we were on the standard not metric system! Regardless, John beat Ellyn in the overall score even though Ellyn was able to win a few matches! (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gsKcZMuqZwM) But, as seemed to be the theme of the weekend, as much as fun as we were having at one place, we had to get moving so we could get it all in!

We took the train back to the city and headed straight to Eureka Tower (the Southern Hemisphere’s tallest building). They have a viewing floor and outdoor platform. It was an awesome view of the city and showed exactly how far the city spreads. As luck would have it, we got up just as the sun was starting to set, so we walked around the floor taking in all the sights and then back round to a spot to watch the sun set completely. Once the sun was gone, we did another walk around the floor looking at the city all lit up! (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kw2dkzgK-to) We headed back to the hotel room to warm up our left over pizza from this morning (Ellyn ordered a breakfast pizza that turned out to be a somewhat regular style pizza and it was huge; since she was saving room for the dessert from the bakeries, she only had a few small pieces) and enjoy some wine on one of the outdoor patios.

After we finished up, we got all dressed up and headed out on the town! We went to the Crown Casino which was just across the River from our place. There was a fire/light display going on that we watched before walking through the casino (the largest in the Southern Hemisphere). We watched some betting but did not place any of our own as we figured our betting luck for the weekend was probably a bit off! We walked all along Southbank (a trendy, newer area along the Yarra River) looking for a good dessert spot. We finally settled on World. It had a huge patio overlooking the river and a band was setting up outside. The band was playing awesome music (a lot of John’s favorites) and the weather was just perfect for an evening outside. We ordered a cheese plate and some dessert wine and sat back to enjoy the tunes and the evening. (We did feel very high class with our cheese platter for dessert and port for John and dessert wine for Ellyn.) We stayed there for longer than we’d planned but the atmosphere, food, drinks, music, etc were all just so great. We did finally pull ourselves out of our seats to head to another place we wanted to visit – Cookie! (Not a sweet shop but a trendy bar right in the CBD.) The menu at this place was unbelievable. There were 3 menus – one each for wine, beer and cocktails. The beer menu was over 60 pages long! It obviously included some description, but still, that is an intense list! John got Ellyn back for her indecisiveness that morning in St. Kilda by taking at least 10 minutes to decide on a beer! (On a side note, John’s been collecting the beer bottles of cool/good/new beers he’s had while in Australia and they are acting as decorations in our apartment. This bottle, once finished, was slipped into his jacket to come back to Adelaide to join the collection!) The bar was very cool and had we been looking for a big night on the town, we would have stayed longer, but alas, we had a 6:30 am flight Monday morning and needed to head back to the room.

We left Melbourne without incident, though we both agreed it was a great weekend in a great city and we definitely would not have minded staying a few more days! Luckily we did not have chatty women behind us on the plane so we were able to get some sleep on the flight back to Adelaide. When we got back to the apartment though, John realized he did not have his cell phone. He said he remembered putting it in his pockets and thinking it wasn’t in there very securely but was too tired to worry about it. He then fell asleep on the plane and forgot about until we got home. Ellyn called the airport and a phone had not turned up. She called John’s phone and someone at the Gold Coast airport answered! Guess the phone decided it wasn’t ready to come back to work and would rather continue travelling around Australia! Given that we only have a few weeks of work left and then will be travelling together, John decided not to get another phone so we are sharing one…very interesting!!

Unfortunately, John started feeling sick over the weekend and it continued into the week. It was a bit frustrating for John, not only because he does not enjoy being sick but it was the week before his big race and so his training took a pretty big hit. Ellyn started a new class at the gym – BODY PUMP – and has really enjoyed it.

We leave at the crack of dawn Saturday morning next weekend to head to Sydney!