Melbourne (10-17.04.13)

Couple of weeks ago I decided to spend half of my autumn holiday in Melbourne. My lovely friends Elizabeth and Catherine who I met last year in Estonia through my friend Laura, were kind enough to host me and my friend Angelica. I left from Sydney on Wednesday and Angelica was to arrive on Sunday. The week went extremely fast, but was filled with beautiful sightseeing, yummy food, great company and lot of new information about Australian history. Huge thanks to Liz and Cath, I had the time of my life!

Brighton Beach

As all these seven days were filled with seeing a lot of places, here are some of my favorite pictures with little descriptions. 

seashells at Brighton Beach

Brighton Beach- Thursday was a chill day going shopping and checking out Liz's school RMIT. That night we went out for a pizza and made plans for Friday

The first place Elizabeth took me on Friday was Brighton Beach. I was really excited to see one of the famous Melbourne beaches. It is well known for the beautiful beach house it has along the beach. They are all colorful and bright and extremely expensive. The weather was perfect and I desperately wanted to take a dip but I had forgotten my swimming suit. We spent hours at the beach picking seashells and dipping our feet in the shallow water. It was a perfect start for a perfect week.

Melbourne at night- In the evening Liz and I met up with Catherine and went to the city center to see Melbourne at night. It got dark slowly, so the first thing we stopped at was an awesome graffiti wall that Melbourne is famous for. It was filled with pretty and some not so pretty work, but the look itself that these walls along a narrow street had, was definitely impressive. For our surprise we even found a sign saying "Hellsinki Melburn". How cool is that!

Catherine and I

MCG, St. Patrick's Cathedral, Chinatown and the Shrine of Remembrance- On Saturday Liz and I went to another tour. The first place we stopped was MCG (Melbourne Cricket Ground). It is one of the famous arenas where sports like cricket, Australian football and rugby is played. It was quite big and really reminded me the Yankee Stadium in the Bronx.

MCG

Our next stop was St. Patrick's Cathedral. We had already stopped at St. Paul's last night and this one was definitely more beautiful. I really loved the dark gray bricks it was built out of and the little garden surrounding it. There was also a wedding about to start, so that was a nice timing. 

I was also eager to see Chinatown in Melbourne so we headed there for a lunch. We both ate sweet and sour pork with spring rolls and a soup. Needless to say it was all delicious.

Chinatown

Our last stop that day was the famous Shrine of Remembrance monument. It is dedicated for the ANZAC (Australian and New-Zealand Army Corps) soldiers who died in the WWI. It's really a beautiful monument and you can have a great view over the city when going up.

The Shrine of Remembrance

 Richmond Tigers game (AFL)/Kyabram- On Sunday we picked up Angelica from the airport and went straight to an AFL game between Richmond Tigers and Western Bulldogs. I was really excited as I had never seen an Australian football game. It was fun to cheer for Liz's favorite team the Tigers, they were really good. We ate  a meat pie (Aussie tradition) and drank either beer or soda. Tigers won and we were all happy. The sport itself reminded me a bit of American football/rugby.

That same night we were driving to Kyabram, the twins' hometown. It is about 2 hours from Melbourne. I was really excited to see the place they grew up and get a hint of an Australian living on a countryside.

While in Kyabram, we visited a local Fauna Park and saw some adorable koalas, kangaroos and wallabies. We also visited a nearby town called Echuca, which is known for one of the longest rivers in Australia- the Murray River. It was a very cute town with old wooden houses and boats. It was like a scene from a Western movie. Echuca also had another "famous" thing to see, the Thong Tree. Basically a huge pole where you can leave your flip flops or thongs as they call it here, lol. 

Hello Kyabram!

a kangaroo

beautiful lorikeets

Echuca

Thong Tree

 Back in Melbourne- Last two days back in Melbourne went really fast. On Tuesday we went out to the pub Catherine works in. They had a student night, so drinks were cheap and I really wanted to see the night life of Aussies. It was a great night, even though the DJ sucked pretty bad.
Wednesday was our last day, so we woke up early and headed to the city. We visited the Shrine again to show it to Angelica as well and stopped at the St. Pauls's Cathedral. Then we met up with Cath and went to the Melbourne Museum. As I love museums it was a great place to visit on my last day in Melbourne. It reminded me the National History Museum in DC, but of course had stuff related with Australia. It was awesome. Around 4pm we went for a lunch and met up with Jack :) I was so excited to see him in Australia. So he and his friend Jon joined us for a late lunch. It was great catching up with him.

Melbourne is really a great city and I would definitely want to go back one day. What made the experience even better was the great company I had and the lovely hosts.

with Jack

with Angelica and Catherine

with Elizabeth