We flew from Sydney down to Melbourne on Wednesday night, and met up with Lockie and Rachael who we would be staying with for the next five nights. They live in an area of Melbourne called Fitzroy, only about a 15-minute tram ride away from the main city. The city and surroundings are amazingly easy to get around, there are tons of trams that you can catch along with buses and trains so you really don’t need a car to get around here, and lots of people ride their bikes since there’s lots of trails and bike lanes around.
The first day, Glen and I took the tram into the city to have a little look around. We hopped on a free tourist bus that takes you all around the city and stops at about thirteen different spots and was hop on/hop off, so just did that to get our bearings straight. We also went over to the Victoria Markets, a giant market that’s on for most of the days of the week and has everything from fruit and veg to clothing and jewelry. Met up with Lockie and Rachael after they were done work and went up to Rooftop Bar for some drinks, then to Vege Bar for some really amazing vegetarian food that was surprisingly awesome!
On Friday, Lockie took us on a huge bike ride that encircles the city and goes along the Yarra River. It took a leisurely two hours and was good to get some exercise in and to see the city up close… totally recommend. Bimbos for lunch of $4 pizzas… soo good.. Then went back to the Victoria Markets later that day again to get supplies for our first legit Australian Barbie… even though there were no Australians at this one (four Kiwis and a Canadian) but we still had shrimps on the Barbie anyways made by the amazing cook Saz!!
Saturday was the big day where we went to Stakes Day at the races! Got all dressed up with a fascinator and everything to go make some bets on some horses and drink! It was an awesome time, the weather was amazing (about 35 degrees) and I’m definitely going to go to horse races more often! Didn’t win anything, just lost about $3 haha but should have picked the horse I’d been talking about for the last couple of days because I liked his name (Albert the Fat) and he ended up winning a race even though his odds weren’t good! I would have been hundreds of dollars richer… oh well, it’s sad talking about it…. Ended up at the Bavarian Beer Café, a sweet spot just in the middle of a park pretty much, where you can set up a blanket or if you’re lucky, get a picnic table. It was sweeett and met lots of cool people!
Sunday was a pretty chill day, drove down to Brighton with Lockie and Rachael to go to the beach, but didn’t stay long since it started to rain a little bit but we still went swimming! Having a relax night to get ready for the big drive back up to Sydney in our pimped out campervan! Should take us a couple days to get there, but going to have some stops on the way and hopefully find a nice parking lot/side of the road to have a sleep in the back. Our next destination is Byron Bay, and were super excited! Going to be up in that area for a little while, so I’ll keep you posted.
