Melbourne

Melbourne

After an extensive drive along the south coast of NSW and along the east coast of Victoria, we came to our 3rd major Australian city. Melbourne!

Melbourne is one of our favourite cities - it's clean, modern, well designed and easy to navigate around. It also has a very european feel, with large gardens, green spaces, and a real arts culture which means there's always live music, galleries, events and things going on in the city centre. The weather is also very European; in that it can be very sunny one minute and then pouring with rain the next! We camped in a suburb about 30 minutes train ride from the CBD as it was cheaper, and it was nice to not drive for a bit!

Us in the centre of Melbourne CBD

Charlotte at the botanic gardens

The city and the river

Melbourne skatepark - was awesome, didn't get a chance to skate though *sadface*

Charlotte and a river, the CBD behind her

Southbank, a very modern area

Charlotte sprawling on the riverside 'grass'

A tall ship

After walking miles, we sat in Dymock's for an hour and did some adult colouring in for a competition. Very relaxing! No prizes for guessing who's is who's...

The next day we ventured into the suburb of St Kilda. This is the hipster/bohemian/hippie area that's a bit more alternative than the city itself. We walked down to the seafront and along the pier around the harbour.

We also got to watch a Cormorant herding up fish and surrounding them, having a feast. 

We walked along the boardwalk for a while and came across a skatepark. Fortunately, I had my skateboard! So I skated for a bit while Charlotte chilled out by the sea.

After St Kilda, we visited a ROOM ESCAPE!

Essentially a room escape is where you get trapped in a room, and have to figure out how to escape using various clever clues and puzzle solving. We were handed this document folder:

and were then locked in the room! It was based on a 'brewery murder' in which we had to use clues to find out who the culprit was. It was great fun, having to solve problems and find keys, figure out padlock numbers, arrange clock faces, interpret flag signals, count alcohol contents, do some basic maths etc, in order to complete it. However, we confused the staff (who were watching on CCTV) by solving some puzzles without even using the clues, completely by accident, and then doing things in the wrong order and still getting the right answers. This was apparently the first time anyone had effectively 'broke' the game...and still won. We were a bit special, basically.

We got to pose for pictures at the end though!

Oh, and we also went out of our way to find a bakery owned by a colleague from school's sister, which turned out to be very tasty (if a little expensive!)