Finally! A Review of Oz

Melbourne was fun. Cold, but fun. And adventures a-plenty were a-had. Nikki, Isabel and I saw the city, mostly, and a suburb: St. Kilda. I liked visiting city centre, but realised I'm just not a big-city girl like my flatmates are. We stayed two nights at a backpacker in St. Kilda, taking advantage of their free BBQ the second night, and then moved on to a backpacker in the city centre. Unfortunately, I didn't get much sleep there...trams, traffic, subway...but here's a run-down of what we did:

-HEAPS of shopping: mostly window or try-on, but found some great deals and I tried roasted chestnuts for the first time! Eating in cute little diners was a plus.

-Visited the Immigration Museum: a fascinating collection of immigration stories, historical artefacts and a portion of a walk-through model ship with the 1st, 2nd, 3rd class living quarters. The ship had a superb sound system that played ship noises and actually made you feel like the entire thing was moving. I wasn't sure if it was actually on hydraulics or something because I was nauseated.

-Federation Square: the arts' centre of the city with buildings and footpaths of amazing architecture, diners and shops and all sorts of art galleries. I believe the square has the largest collection of art in Oz.

-Queen Victoria Market: the largest weekend-ly outdoor market in Queensland. It reminded me of the market in Hawaii that we went to with Uncle Tim and Aunt Helena. There was just about everything there!

-Crown Casino: 10 blocks of casino, restaurants...even a movie theatre. We went in the last night before I left to eat a nice dinner and check things out. The building was incomprehensibly enormous.

-Hair Dye: Isabel and I both dyed our hair. Izzy went with the professional option while I opted for the reduced-price, expired aluminium packet of reddish "wash-out-in-7-washes" hair dye-job in the bathroom of the backpacker. It was my first time dyeing my hair. The bravery of it all came from my sis and bro, whose hair we've dyed too many times :o) For the two weeks following, there was dye on my towel after showering. And I think I saw remnants of red in my hair yesterday.

Moving onto Brisbane was an adventure in itself. I missed my monday night flight by going to the wrong airport (melbourne has two - one on either end of the city, a 45 min drive between), went back to the backpacker (a 25min bus ride), up the next morning to make it to the correct airport for my 9am flight where I waited in a miniscule airport with multitudes of people for 6 hours while the sun broke through the dense fog.

Finally, I arrived in Brissie and checked into "Somewhere to Stay" backpacker. While cooking dinner that night I met Gavin, Dion, Adrien (Wales), Christine, Yvonne, Geraldine (Scotland), Minna (Finland), Matt (Oz), Duane (NZ) and Lee (UK). After dinner I introduced a bunch of them to SET, the greatest card game on the planet.

Grocery shopping wednesday with a general attitude of "taking-it-easy" after my travel fiasco. Went downtown with Duane and saw the US Navy band perform! The lead vocalist easily switched between Bob Marley, Stevie Wonder and Frank Sinatra. I was VERY impressed and told them so afterward. That night we stayed up way too late - to bed at 3am. Thursday I went to the botanical gardens (BrisVegas was nice and warm!) with Yvonne and a German girl named Linda. I felt funny that day, as though I couldn't cope with the heat. Got a little chilled on the walk home after sweating in the sun. It's really no surprise that I was ploughed over by some flu-ish train that evening, just about the time that Nikki and Isabel arrived from Melbourne. The rest of my week was spent recovering. Whether during a BBQ at Southbank (manmade beach in the middle of town) or going out to a movie, I took it easy. I actually spent an entire day on the couch in the backpacker lounge. They hire 20 movies a week for their residents so I watched heaps of them, including Amelie.

The Brisbane portion of my trip could be seen as a disaster, but really, the people made it awesome. The backpacker was incredible; the staff were incredibly friendly, playing SET with us and even making an effort to learn everyone's names. The Welsh Boys (...on Tour, as they proclaimed themselves), the Scottish girls, Lee and I spent so much time together that I was actually hard to leave. The girls are coming to NZ sometime before I leave and might visit! As a side note: most of these travellers were in Oz on working visas. They lived at the backpacker, worked days and partied nights.The night before I left, we went out in honour of my going-away. It was funny though because I was still sick so I left my own party at about 11pm. Isabel, Nikki and I were catching the shuttle to the airport at 5:45am. We had a 9:10am flight and sat around the airport for a few hours. In our exhaustion we were the loudest passengers on the flight, laughing hysterically about nothing and everything. It was a fantastic adventure.

The end.

ps - Lee has a travel website up...he's been to Boise and has a few pics up from his trip!