Melbourne....pronounced Mel-Bin

Luke Feldman the professional cricketer

A view from the Skydeck
Big pimpin, plus they are reversible

B-Ridge in the Bootleg Terminal

Well I'm finally recovering from my recent weekend trip to Melbourne! My travel companions on this excursion were RJ, Kalli and Bridgit, and we were able to meet up with some of our friends Leah, Meaghan, Jonah and Sydney. We flew in Thursday afternoon and came home Sunday morning at 0650! Needless to say, Sunday was pretty rough; hangovers are hard when you just don't sleep.

So we got into Melbourne at about 4:30 PM and caught the Skybus shuttle into the city. It was pretty simple which is nice because we literally got off the plane and said, 'shit, how do we get downtown?' The airline that we flew was called Tiger Airways, and let me tell you it was a piece of junk! They don't even have a designated terminal at the Melbourne Airport, we literally got off and walked into what looked like a holding pen for detainees. It was a parking lot that was surrounded in chain link fence.

We stayed at a hostel called Nomads Melbourne and all in all it was a great hostel. We were able to meet up with some friends who had gone down the previous day so of the ten beds in the hostel, our group used 6. Our first night we went to a local Italian place and got some really good pizza, then we explored a little and hit up the hostel bar and then a few local pubs. The beer is real cheap if you know where to look, we were able to get $10 jugs (pitchers) which is unheard of in OZ.

The next morning we decided to hit up the Queen Victoria Market for some breakfast and souvenir shopping. RJ and I bought matching Kimono's and wore them around all day. We got a few stares and one man came up and said we had better be getting paid to wear them. Later in the afternoon we walked down to see the real heart of Melbourne. I forget what it was called but it had tons of shops and boutiques. RJ and I were following a bunch of girls which was nice, but shopping really isn't our thing so we just took it all in. We had lunch at a great cafe where I had the best BLT ever. After a long day we went back to the hostel to relax and celebrate our friend Kalli's 21st birthday.

Back at the hostel, we were taking bets on how long Kalli would make it and the over/under was 10PM. Lets just say the under won by a landslide! So she had a rough night but the rest of us had a great time checking out the Eureka Skydeck which is the Southern Hemispheres highest viewing deck, Melbourne looks amazing at night, but my one critique was that around the viewing deck they had set up what looked like binoculars, they were not binoculars they were kaleidoscopes which made seeing every thing even harder. The joke we made was "too easy to see Melbourne, trying looking through a kaleidoscope". We were hungry and decided to stop for a quick bite at McDonalds, not good I know, but the cheapest thing besides a burger was $10 garlic bread. Next we walked around to some local pubs/clubs which all the ladies we were with had no trouble getting into, but RJ and i were denied from every single one! We finally found a great local pub and tucked in for the night.

Saturday morning was rough, but we all got up and tried to plan out our day. The first thing we wanted to do was rent a car but thankfully we decided against it. Instead we took a tram to the cricket pitch and watched a cricket game. It was really cool, very relaxed and laid back. A friend we were with was talking to one of the fielders and got his number and later that night we meet up with Luke Feldman and the rest of his cricket team. It was pretty cool.

We stayed up all night partying with the cricket team and then headed back to the hostel to grab out stuff and head to the airport. The check in at Tiger Airways is just as bootleg as the baggage claim and it was made worse by the fact that we were all hungry, it was 5:30 and we hadn't slept a wink. Lets just say Sunday was a mess but we made it home to Sydney safe and sound! Another trip in the books. Peter comes in a week and I'm excited for our quickly approaching trip to the Great Barrier Reef and Brisbane!