It’s Easter weekend and we are off to Melbourne – me to continue my travels heading west through the country and Hilary for a girlie weekend away. It makes leaving Sydney a little easier having my buddy with me as I’m sure there’d have been a lot more tears exiting Sydney 😭.
The flight is easy although check-in was ridiculous. First time to travel with Virgin Australia, I checked in on-line then had to check in at a machine to get a tag for my bag and then had to queue for forty-five minutes and basically check in again. There were a lot of frustrated people in that queue and we were getting hangry…. Anyways we get through security with enough time to have some lunch, thank God cos we may have killed someone! Fed and watered and a book purchased for Hils we’re ready to get this show on the road.
We arrive to our hotel which is on Flinders Street by the railway station which is a beautiful old building:
I’ve organized some wine and chocolate strawberries for our arrival… start as we mean to go on.
After checking out a cool wine bar we go for dinner at Hochi Mama which serves Vietnamese fusion and is an amazing start to the weekend.
Saturday morning and you know what’s coming don’t you… yes, it’s another parkrun. Melbourne’s parkrun is held in Albert park at 8am so we dust ourselves off and get out there. Another of the Sri Lanka crew joins us for the run.
After parkrun it’s hotel brekkie time and we spend most of the day wandering through the streets and shopping. Hilary does particularly well as there’s a Debenhams in Melbourne – it’s the only one in Australia. There are some nice old arcades along the main shopping area:
We meet up with a friend who I used to sing with at choir, who now lives in Melbourne, and have a great night catching up at Botega Italian restaurant. We have a lot to catch up on and there’s quite a bit of laughter from a slightly raucous table!
Sunday is our touristy day and we start by visiting the National Gallery of Victoria. There’s some very interesting stuff – old and new. There’s an exhibit called Triennial and the pieces are dispersed around the gallery among the permanent collection. It’s a great opportunity for the selfie enthusiasts and I see a woman (yes a fully aged woman as opposed to a teenager or child!) ask someone to take a photo of her in front of a single skull that’s in a beautiful room full of 16th and 17th century works of art…. wait for it though… after she’s done the splits in front of it. Seriously, what is wrong with people. The skulls below (they look small in the photo but they were huge) filled a whole room and the selfies being taken were unreal…
I particularly liked the reclining Buddha with the Roman and Greek figures on it. And the below was a video in the style of Marylyn Monroe:
We check out Federation square and pass by the famous Spiegal tent and have a jaunt around the free tram area. In the evening we take the tram to St Kilda where we see a beautiful sunset:
Once the sun goes down the little blue penguins swim ashore and burrow in the rocks for their nights sleep. It’s a bank holiday so the pier is busy with people but we do manage to see a few of them:
This little fella insisted on crossing from one side to the other:
After the excitement of the penguins we head back to the city to the Comedy Festival and we go to see Shitfaced Shakespeare. Tonight it’s Romeo and Juliet. It’s a shortened one hour version and of the five cast members one has been drinking before the show and as you might gather from the title is shitfaced. They change who’s drunk each night and tonight it was Juliet – she was hilarious and it was a lot funnier than I was expecting it to be. We got a great laugh out of it and it was a great way to finish out the weekend.
All in all we had a great weekend in Melbourne and it’s a cool city to visit. I’m going to miss Hilary but onwards I must go….
odohertyelaine 
Brilliant
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