Off to the Wonderful World of Auss: Discovering Melbourne

This weekend's post is being divided into 2 because I have so many pictures to post with it!

This past Friday, my friends Lizzy, Melissa, Bekah and I took a trip down to Melbourne.

This is where Melbourne (A) is in relation to Sydney (the star)

We arrived late Friday morning and spent the afternoon walking around the downtown area. We saw China Town, the Greek Area, and a lot of really cool stores and buildings.

Before coming to Melbourne, I had heard that it is a lot more artsy than Sydney and I now can see why. The architecture here is really cool and there are sculptures everywhere. We found a lot of cool street art and, my personal favourite, the elephants. The city is covered in painted elephant sculptures for a "Mali in the City" campaign.

Because Australia is south of the equator, the south is colder than the north. When we left Sydney we were able to wear shorts all day, but here we are all bundled up in our winter jackets. And this city is extremely windy! We almost got blown over while walking on the street.

On Saturday, we woke up bright and early (and I mean early! 6am is not an hour that I usually see) to go on a tour of the Great Ocean Road. It was a really cool experience! A post of this tour will be up in a bit because I have a lot of pictures to go through for it.

On Sunday, we gave ourselves a sleep-in after waking up early 2 days in a row. We went to the Queen Victoria markets, which is a huge, famous market place that is open on the weekends. It was really cool walking around and looking at everything. They had a bunch of vendors who were making food there and it all looked really good so we ate lunch there. Afterwards, we decided to explore the city more. We walked from where our hostel was at one end of the city all the way to the other end where there was a river and back. The city is really pretty. We saw a lot of cool street art and more of the elephant statues. Melbourne is also known for its graffiti. Before coming here we were told to find the alley ways that were covered in graffiti. We found a few and they are all really cool.

Sunday night, we met up with one of Lizzy's friends who goes to the University of Melbourne for dinner. We went to this really cool street. It had a very European feel with all of the restaurants having street / sidewalk seating areas. Her friend was really nice and actually knows the two Emory students that go to the University of Melbourne.

On Monday, Lizzy and I walked around the city. We walked about 9 kilometres from where our hostel was to a cool shopping area called Docklands to the Eureka Skydeck and back to the hostel. It was a long walk but we saw a lot of the city which was really cool. We also went up to the Eureka Skydeck. The Skydeck is the highest public vantage point in the Southern Hemisphere. To get to the top (the 88th floor), you take an elevator that goes from the 1st floor to the 88th floor in under 30 seconds. It was really cool! The views from the top of the skydeck were amazing! You could see all of Melbourne for miles. We also walked around the city a bit and found a lot more elephants before heading to the airport to come back to Sydney.

I really enjoyed my weekend and had a lot of fun. Melbourne is a really cool city! However, I'm glad I chose Sydney over Melbourne. While Melbourne was really cool, I feel like we saw almost everything in just 4 days and every week in Sydney I am discovering more fun things to do.

Stay tuned for my Great Ocean Road post...