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Days 11 to 28
Soooooo it's been a little while since I've checked in ... sorry .... Haha. Well I'll bring you up to speed on what's happened since Sunday.
Well Sunday night I just popped by a market and bought a few things and brought them back to the apartment and was debating going out around town .... Well I was pretty exhausted so I pretty much just crashed and passed out around 9 .... with the lights still on and the tv on ... Awesome ... Haha. So sometime in the night I turned those off and quickly fell back to sleep and woke up bright and early the next morning at like 7 ish ... For any of those that know my skipping habits this was definitely a strange occurrence. Anyway I kinda lazed about until about 9:45 cause check out was at 11:00 and sat in the courtyard of the apartment till about 11:45 which is when my dad arrived! I was no longer alone haha.
It was about lunchtime when my dad arrived so we just walked across the street to this cute little Thai place .... And when I say little ... I mean little. There was room for about 4 or5 small tables ... Good thing we were the only customers haha. After lunch we headed down the street to Chapel Street to check out a bookstore I had found the day before. Have I mentioned that Melbourne is super super fashionable?! I mean pretty much every single person is very well dressed, and the shopping! Let me tell you, every other store (if not more) is a clothing store, and not only that but in the South Yarra area they're almost all high end stores. Dangerous, very dangerous. Good thing my bag is super small and I don't have room for anymore clothing haha. Anyway, so my dad and I went to the bookstore and got a Tasmania Lonely Planet book and then headed into town towards Federation Square and checked out the neat architecture and went to the Centre of Moving Image ( or something like that ) and checked out the exhibit displaying the history of movies/television/video games. It was pretty interesting, it showed all these old movies and has exhibits introducing movies with sound and the effect sound has on the industry as well as displayed the effect World War II had on television and the effect television had on wars like the Vietnam War which was has been considered the television war due to the fact that television was really the only way most people could experience the war.
After that we checked out the BMW Edge which is this building where this arts college was putting on a bunch of little concerts, basically showcasing their students and looking for new students. We just listened to one of the acts and she was good! A beautiful venue to play too. Needless to say I was quite jealous haha. Anyway moving onwards, after that my Dad and I just headed back to the apartment in South Yarra and then we went to this really good fish and chips place that was actually kind of healthy believe it or not haha. The next day (Tuesday) my we headed into St. Kilda, which is this really nice beach town that only takes about half an hour to get there by tram and we walked along the beach boardwalk and admired the views and tries to find some penguin, we didn't find any though:( haha but we did experience some pretty crazy weather! That morning had started off pretty sunny but the clouds were looming, by the time we got to St. Kilda there was a very dark menacing cloud following us so we just walked toward the patch of sun we saw in the distance. Unfortunately the cloud was too darn fast and it started pouring rain, thankfully only for a moment haha, so we headed back into the main part of St. Kilda and searched for a place to have lunch and we found this great seafood place and had this amazing seafood linguine mmm so delish. After lunch we just headed back to the apartment because my Dad wanted to get sone fencing practice in and I wanted to check out the yoga scene. I had some difficulty trying to find out class times and such so while my dad headed to fence I went to Federation Square to use the free Wi-fi only to find out that I was too late for the 4 pm class and would have to wait till 6 for the next class ... Bummer haha. I ended up just spending my time searching stuff on my iPod till I had to leave for the class. I went to the Richmond Bikram Yoga studio and had a sweet super hot and sweaty class and then headed back to the apartment and my sweet awesome daddio made some din din :).
The next day I was finally going to be able to meet up with my friend Heshan who is doing a work term at the University of Melbourne. Heshan and I met up for lunch and wandered the streets for awhile in search of a nice cheap place to eat. Much harder than it sounds. Everything is so much more expensive here! It is considered really cheap to have a meal for $10 ... Bah. Despite this, we actually found a pretty great fish and chips place that also serves lots of fresh sushi so we ate there, then Heshan showed around the University a little bit:).
I had agreed with my Dad that I would go and meet him at his fencing after I was finished lunch with Heshan. The only problem was that I sorta forgot where exactly he was going to be fencing. I knew it was in North Melbourne in the community centre but didn't really know where that was. Soooo I started walking in the direction of the tram that would be heading that way, hopped on a tram and took it to North Melbourne. When I asked some people if they knew where the community centre was or where the cricket club was ( that is where the main stuff was happening ) no one, and I mean no one knew what I was talking about. Awesome. I then just sorta started walking aimlessly trying to find these elusive places haha and not having much success. I even went into a travel centre and they said they couldn't help me haha. Finally I went to the North Melbourne library to ask if they knew where they were or if they maybe had map of the area. Thankfully the librarian was kind enough to print a map off of google maps for me and then I was on my way again. It took me about 2 hours to get there when it should've taken me no longer than half an hour bahaha. I'm just glad that my dad had found someone to fence so he wasn't completely just waiting for me. We then cruised on home and went to a restaurant in South Yarra called Globe, it ended up being way fancier than we thought it would be but very delicious, even when our waiter gave us someone else's meal by accident and we not knowing what to expect started eating it! Oh dear, poor guy. We ordered bread with baba ganoush, humous, and tzaziki I think. Then we got duck and something else, I can't remember haha. That's what I get for taking so long to blog haha. We then went home to bed to get well rested for the out next big day.
On Thursday we had planned to drive along the Great Ocean Road which is this amazing road that goes all along the coast in Victoria. Part of the adventure started just with renting the car and my dad getting used to driving on the left side of the road and the right side of the car! Very strange indeed.
The first place we stopped along the way was Torquay, home of famous Bells Beach where there is a huge surfing competition. There also is this really sweet surfing museum! Surfworld Australia Surfing Museum. Gnarly Bra haha. The museum had some interesting facts about the history and development of the sport of surfing, including the development of the surfboard and such. There was also this pretty funny movie playing about these two Aussie blokes that decided that they were going to go to the US and surf in all 50 states haha. While we were in Torquay we also stopped by Bells Beach itself and checked out the surf. That beach is huuuuuuge! It seemed like a really sweet spot, I was definitely envious of the surfers out on the water. There was just too much left to see for my dad and I to stop and surf. Who knows, maybe I'll hunker down in Torquay and become a regular surf town bum haha.
The next stop along the Great Ocean Road was just a little look out called Urquhart Bluff which was quite pretty.
As we were driving I was reading through the Lonely Planet book and kept reading about Koala sightings and such and I really really wanted to see some Koala. We started driving through the Otway National. Park and my dad said "Why don't you just start looking up in the trees? Maybe you'll see one." almost immediately after I spotted some and some other tourists had pulled over to take pictures.
CONTINUATION
We pulled over as well and spotted several Koalas and we took a bunch of photos (that's for you Deanna if you read this). It was so very exciting! Many of the Koalas had baby Koalas with them, which was quite cute. After that we headed onward and drove the extremely windy roads all down each of the towns, stopping here and there to take pictures and check out some of the scenery. We stopped at the Cape Otway Lighthouse and went on a short walk .. which unfortunately didn't have much scenery ... oh well. And of course we drove onwards to see the Twelve Apostles (of which there are only 6 left I believe). After that we drove back to Melbourne .. but drove inland since it was going to be dark and wouldn't be able to see anything anyway.
The next day my dad went to fencing and I met him there and then we walked through part of the Queen Victoria Market and got some food and then headed onto the Tourist Shuttle to see a bit more of the city. Went home then went to this Indonesian restaurant called The Rice Table and then we got the Rice Table (Rijsttafel) which is basically a ridiculous amount of food haha. It was really delicious though. Then we headed back because my dad had to get some rest for his competition in the Commonwealth Fencing Championship the next day.
On Saturday October 2nd, my dad headed off for fencing and I went to watch and met up with my friend Heshan who kindly watched the competition with me. It was a pretty cool competition. My dad fenced quite well (although he probably wouldn't say that) and made it to the 8's I believe and unfortunately lost to a past Australian Olympian who I believe ended up coming second in the competition! Not bad Daddio :). During one of the breaks Heshan and I went to the Queen Victoria Market for some lunch and got a "burger with the lot" which is one of the biggest burgers I've ever seen! It had lettuce, tomato, bacon, egg, beef patty, cheese, and more I think. Pretty awesome. After my dad finished I met up with him back at the apartment and we went to this szechuan restaurant called Dainty Sichuan that my dad had been wanting to go to the whole week. Man, that was some HOT food, and a lot of it! We then went back home and got all our stuff packed up for our early morning flight the next day to TASMANIA!
Sunday October 3rd
We woke up ... late ... because well there was a time change and we foolishly forgot to change our watches :S. We got a taxi to Southern Cross Station to get the shuttle to the airport and then flew to Hobart, Tasmania! We arrived pretty early and didn't think we'd be able to check into the hotel yet so we ended up going to the Royal Botanical Gardens where the Spring Festival just happened to be going on. We walked around the beautiful gardens, bought some Abalone wraps and then situated ourselves on a nice quiet, sunny hill and read our books for a few hours haha. Then we went to the hotel and checked in and then headed out to walk around the harbour where the Silimanca Market happens and then we drove up Mount Wellington and watched the sunset before we headed back to the hotel to make some dinner.
