After a lovvvvely final morning having breakfast on Sydneys darling harbour with Lucy and Pa, we realised our airport shuttle was due in 5minutes and had do a sexy kind of half run/half walk (thanks to Jades gammy ankle and the Aussie disdain for jay walking) back to our accomodation to catch it on time. Luckily it was late. Also lucky is the Australian domestic flying system, where you show up at the airport, say any name, if its on the flight list then you’re on board. No need for ID, who cares who’s on the plane? Your bags overweight? Smh, no worries Sheila just lift it off the scales a little. Pitch up half an hour before take off and you’re golden.

Anyway, theres a very different aussie airport story to come at the end of this post.

We stayed in Discovery hostel and got extremely lucky with our dorm and dormates, the facilities were also really great and although its enormous which can make hostels seem like they’re going to be shabby, we really liked it. It was also walking distance from pretty much all of the CBD and northern surburbs and just a tram ride away from seaside St Kilda. We gave our selves 5 days here and I could easily have stayed longer as each day we went out we’d just stumble upon another cool thing, that wasn’t whatever thing we were originally looking for.

One of our dorm mates took our map from us and circled everything we should do in the city, so on Day two we had a quick look in around a shopping centre in search of warm shoes then headed up to Fitzroy, a northern suburb which I guess you might compare to Camden or Totnes in terms of the stores and cafes/restaurants on offer, but with its own completely unique arcitecture and graffiti. My entire FB album of Melbourne is instagrammed photos of the city – the graffiti/weird masonry decor will be Fitzroy. We ducked in and out of a few shops and had lunch in such a typically hippy/kitch deli.

Day three we packed in actual shopping, buying said warm shoes (UGGS, obvs), once again New Zealand will be freezing and snowy so we absolutely NEEEEEED these ;), A visit to the National Gallery of Victoria and a sunset stroll on the beach at St Kilda.

The gallery was sweet, first thing you see as you enter is an exhibition of brightly coloured feathery polar bears in various polar beary stances, whats not to like? Now obviously Australias history isn’t particularly old so they don’t have many of their own artists from some of the great periods but the NGV has gathered a fairly impressive collection from around the globe. It should have been no real surprise that within their European collection were paintings of ships being thrown into rocks at Start Point, and horses splashing through waves at Sandbanks. Come to a gallery on the otherside of the world (literally) and heres some paintings of home! Their Asian exibition and european home decor exhibitions were also interesting. Jade got told off for drinking from her water bottle, in the empty centre of a room at least three metres from any of the cabinet enclosed pieces, obviously she looks like the type to spray it everywhere…

We also made it down to St Kilda, feeling chilly this was basically just coffee and a brisk walk along the seafront – very pretty but also very brief as the penguin colony who apparently hang out here in the evening were no where in sight :(.

Day four we were booked onto a Wine/Chocolate/Food/Coffee tour… have you ever heard four words go together so perfectly? Our cafe bus driver Lee was brilliant, and adorable. He very quickly and not too subtly bought up his wife, so he obviously gets a lot of lady attention on his tours. He poured the group their first coffee then wisked us off to the chocolate factory for breakfast!! Lee was full of local trivia and of course plentiful knowledge about the Yarra Valley vineyards and winerys, but more importantly he was well in with the (lady) staff at the chocolaterie, so we got to do some extra tasting of a unique range of garden-herb-chocolate?! our fave of which was the coconut and curry leaf, sounds gross but was deeelish. Unlimited chocolate drops, ice cream samples and gourmet truffles = best breakfast everrrr.
With chocolate lined stomachs we went for our first tasting at an Aussie run, farmhouse style winery. These were by far my favorite wines of the day and for those of us who hadn’t done a tasting before we got a bit of an introduction in how to recognise certain characteristics of wine and how to perfect the swirl – none of which had any hint of snobbery and infact every winery we visited had different opinions and in turn accepted other opinions on what makes good wine, award winning wine and easy drinking wine – shunning those sterotypical wine snobs who only drink one specific french and refuse to try anything else.

Next up was a strawberry farm and farm produce shop, an interesting venture that two local brothers and their wives originally started as a tomato farm but wound up being the town and districts fave food shop. We were given a selection of Yarra valley cheeses, chutneys and relishes, fruit and their own strawberry liquers and port to try YUM. The town was also home to famous opera star, australian tresure Dame Nelly Melba, who built a cottage and named it Coombe after her favourite English town!

Our next stop was French winery, Dominique Portet, an historic french wine family whose most recent decendent made the decision to come and make wine in Australia. This place was beautiful and had a cool chocolate labrador who we fussed over a lot more than the wine, which I didn’t really think much of to be honest, soz Dommy.

After lunch in a cute little town which we hadddd to go jewelery shopping in, we visited The White Rabbit brewery to taste some cider, a few ales and learn a little about the brewing process. All delicious and interesting – plus the place was kitted out with loads of retro patterned sofas and chairs and had that general Aussie vibe of not giving a hoot and doing whatever seems fun at the time 🙂 hence the crazy beer flavours.

The final winery was of Italien origin. The hilarious Aussie manager showed us round and tested us on all the knowledge we were supposed to have picked up on throughout the day… however he was quickly interupted by a crew of kangaroos boinging around the vines which being tourists we all wanted to concentrate on while sipping their delish cab sav and eating free pizza. Overall an awesome day and something we’ll probably look to do again in New Zealand’s wine region!

For our final day in Melbourne we tried to fit in a few of their famous markets, including the Rose Street Artists market which was gorgeous. We also hit the Melbourne Museum, which frankly puts many british museums to shame. If you’re in Melbourne then go to it… And like us lose one another in the maze like layouts they absolutely love 🙂 plus theres loads of funny exhibitions that make for an excellent snapchat “my story”.

Way back in Hue, Vietnam, we met our lovely friend Nick and spent quite a lot of time in Nam with him. He’s from Melbourne so for our final night out here we met up him and a few of his friends. Our airport transfer was due to arrive at 4.30am… We went out and sampled some of Melbourne’s awesome bars and clubs, helped avert one fist fight and got scorned for drinking wine in a bar (helplessly tried to explain that this is fine at home, its the cheapest strongest way to drink) spent an hour or so arguing which Torquay is better the Aus or England version, left Jade to do her own thing in one club 😉 then finally at 3.30am we left a gay/drag bar (in which I was the tallest actual female), stumbled back to the hostel, drunkenly hoped all our belongings were in our bags – I briefly passed out in reception to a sound track of people arguing with the night manager, with an apple hanging out of my mouth, while Jade made some other friends… The transfer was late, the flight turned out to be internationally bound after Cairns = major queues, the check in staff were being idiots, security hauled us up for extra checks five minutes before take off time and down to no fault of our own the plane was held up by 45minutes… Oooops. Most painful flight ever for me, while Jade was K.O.ed, but finallllly we landed in Cairns and scoffed the worlds most expensive sausage roll…. Thats the last time we mix nights out and early morning flights!

So there it is, Melbourne, worlds “coolest” city… Onto the east coast!

Rose x