Mel-buhn

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That’s how they say it here… Melbourne, that is, just in case you were wondering. If you weren’t wondering… at least you know now. You never know when somebody will be talking about it and you will be able to understand them even if they are Australian. Brisbane, similarly, is pronounced briz-bihn and that is where Chandrodeo clown (aka Chansauce aka Chandra) currently is. She flew out Saturday afternoon and she is staying with a friend’s ex-boyfriend for the week up in the Gold Coast/Brisbane area. It should be wonderfully nice there for her and we’re all excited to see pics and hear some excellent travel info about the place when she returns.

Before you get into this particular bloggerton... please note it is a long and somewhat in depth recount of our time in Melbourne, so brace yourselves for a long and winding read.

Ok folks – this here blog is going to be built around our trip to the city of Melbourne. Just to clarify, Melbourne is ‘the other’ city in Australia. Essentially you can split Australia into either Sydneysiders or Melbournites (I made up that second term) as this is where half the population of the nation lives. Melbourne is quite different from Sydney in a lot of ways, most notably the laid back atmosphere of everything and the plethora of Nando’s Restaurants everywhere. There are next to none here in Sydney, but Nando’s chicken shack is like the McDonald’s/Starbucks of Melbourne. You see one, if not six, on every block of every street. Nando’s, incidentally, is Skinner’s favorite place ever and he ate there 7 meals in a row.

Other fun things about Melbourne are the simply silly structures and architectural designs everywhere. It honestly looks like somebody gave Picasso a crayon and told him to draw a building in certain cases. Ridiculous colors contrasted with exotic shapes and textures are a staple of all things Melbourne. Sometime buildings, in this case the old Library, just sink into the ground for no apparent reason. It is truly the counter-culture version of Sydney. We all loved it.

And now I will walk you through our days in Melbourne with exact times for everything we did (based completely on my memory, so don’t fault me for some mistakes).

Tuesday January 6th, 2009

4:47am – I awake to the sounds of birds chirping
4:48am – I run around shaking everyone awake and apologize to Taylor for waking him up (Taylor couldn’t come with us due to his rigorous working schedule)
5:24am – Everyone boards the 5:21 bus and heads towards the train station
6:17am – We get to the airport in plenty of time for our 7:00am departure
6:18am – I see the mile-long line and worry we might not make our flight
6:21am – yadda yadda yadda… we’re all through security [note that they don’t even check ID ever… for anyone… whatsoever… or water bottles]
8:15am – land in Melbourne only to find out we are 50km outside of Melbourne CBD in some random place called Avalon
8:30am – board a bus to ‘Real Melbourne’ after paying $20 for a bus pass… bull crap
11:00am – find a hostel we’re content with
11:01am – book said hostel
11:02am – find out we can’t check into our rooms until 2:00pm
11:03am – head out on the tizzown and try to find some food
11:15am – hit up a local market that is packed with all sorts of goodies – everything from flags and bandanas to salt shakers and Asian massages
12:30pm – eat at a delicious foodcourt and wonder what’s up next for us… because we’re so tired we need a nap before venturing out anywhere
1:00pm – go to an awesome Spanish/Mexican restaurant and share margaritas
1:37pm – get to the hostel and beg them to let us check in, which they do
1:41pm – asleep in our room
1:57pm – everyone begins taking off more and more clothes as we realize our room on the 6th floor is quite possibly the hottest room in the southern hemisphere at that moment
4:00pm – awake and excited to see the city
4:30pm – after seeing some sights and finding the Library (key for internet access and central location) we’re in the park for a nice little picnic and some ball throwing games
7:30pm – food/showers/primping/gaming/etc. readying ourselves for a night of fun in Melbourne
10:00pm – Fun bar with nice atmosphere and cold beer called the Bear Brass
11:00pm – live music at an awesome Irish Pub called PJ Obrien’s
11:17pm – singing along with the lone acoustic guitarist guy while sipping on some Strongbow Cider (it’s Strongbow season here in Australia)
11:59pm – last song for the man and we’re moving on
12:07am – Skinner is headed home because he’s got a bit of a cold and the other 4 (Me, Erin, Blindo, Chandra) are headed to check out the largest Casino in the southern Hemishpere
1:30am – Erin and I head home after losing a little bit of money while playing roulette (Erin did the coaching... I did the playing and losing)
2:45am (or thereabouts) – everyone is back and asleep for a couple hours until we awake minutes later because we are again sweating to death.


Wednesday January 7th, 2009

9:41am – Alarm goes off and everyone has to get up and out by 10am checkout
10:17am – The search for our next hostel begins
11:30am – The search for our next hostel ends with a hotel-ish sort of place that has air conditioning
11:31am – Air conditioner is turned on full-blast
11:58am – out on the town and first-time Nando’s eating for many of us
12:34pm – checking out various buildings and possibilities for entertainment and ended up hanging out in the hustling/bustling central train station with lots of shops and fun decorations as evidenced by the great photography of Erin and her fancy camera features.
1:27pm – decided not to see Bolt 3D in the theatre and opted for outdoor sight-seeing instead
3:45pm – Erin, Skinner and I all take a nap in preparation for the ‘Marvelous Melbourne Pub Crawl’
5:30pm – MMPC begins with the Bear Brass (same place from the night before but tonight they have really cheap pizza + Stella beer combo)
6:00pm – Skinner and I struggle trying to find the result of the cricket match we had attended two days earlier (it had just ended and was quite close in the end. Apparently it came down to the last couple of overs and a dude that had gotten injured earlier in the match [with a broken knuckle] had to return to bat again if the South Africans were to have a chance to tie. He fended off the ball for 17 agonizing bowls, but in the end failed to protect the wicket, which was ultimately the final wicket for Australia. In simpler terms – Australia won after 5 days instead of tying.)
6:51pm – e fiftyfive, the second stop on the MMPC, lives up to the hype of Melbourne’s pubs being fun and hard to find. We stayed at this place for a while simply because the beer was cheap and we had all night to hit all the rest of the places. Some of the highlights of this place were the dirt-cheap decorations and couches littering the establishment, the oldschool videogame console, which we played, Erin moving her glass away as I poured her a beer, which resulted in beer spilled on her jeans at only our second stop of the night, and a nice bartender with a great afro.
7:59pm – the bar formerly known as 6Links and formerly active, but currently closed down due to numerous noise complaints… bummer, we're moving on.
8:03pm – Misty (bar #3)… but we didn’t quite make it in until well after 8pm because this place was down the absolute coolest alley I’ve ever seen. It is probably one of the most famous streets in Melbourne because it is loaded with incredible graffiti from street to roof. Check the pics.


The bar ended up being somewhat of a letdown after the amazing alley we traveled through to get there. The highlight of the bar was probably the ‘Misty Bitch’, which is the cocktail they are famous for. Chandra was the only one brave enough to try it and it was essentially an inversion of a Sour Patch Kid (i.e. it was sweet at first and then very sour at the end).
8:42pm – Loop, another bar that either didn’t exist or we couldn’t find, was passed up for a place called the Spleen. It was kind of a grungy place to be (hence the name Spleen), but Skinner utilized his time lapse camera setting on Lindy as he drank a beer.
9:08pm – Carlton Hotel Bar (stop #5) was up next. This place also had some just plain silly decorations. Velvet carpet on the walls and life-sized Ostriches were my favorite parts.
9:49pm – The Lounge… well we entered only to find that the downstairs bar was closing but that the upstairs dance club was very much open so we headed upstairs to investigate. After finding out it was a $5-10 cover we decided to keep moving before we lost any steam on our adventurous night.
10:06pm – Next we’re walking through Chinatown trying to find an alley that we are supposed to head down to find the 7th place we’re scheduled to hit. After walking up and down the street for about 10 minutes, I spot the alley we are looking for and warily head in that direction. I'm fairly certain it has to be incorrect so I don't get my hopes up. As the alley gets darker and scarier every step I take, I make a turn only to find that the next section of alley is even darker and scarier. People are sitting in the shadows (turns out they worked in a restaurant and were on a break), but it was one of the creepier experiences in Melbourne. Finally at the end of the alley there is a dimly lit doorway with ‘Croft Institute’ hastily painted over the top. Now in order to picture this right just imagine a high school chemistry lab room from the 80’s and basically you have the Croft Institue. It was the single coolest place I’d ever been in and I felt so privileged to be there. They had specialty cocktails with names like ‘The Antidote’ and ‘Formula 57’. The bartender, who turned out to be an extremely friendly and helpful individual, informed us that shots are normally served out of plastic syringes but that they were currently out of stock… due for a shipment the following day. Erin and Chandra chatted it up with bartender boy as the Brians and I went upstairs to check out the ‘Departments of Male and Female Hygiene’ as they are so aptly named at the Croft Institute. They were even crazier than downstairs and even included a gurney in the women’s room, which we found out several minutes later when Erin and Chandra investigated for themselves. This was by far the coolest pub any of us have ever, and possibly will ever be in. I wish I had pictures, but as I said before I only have access to Erin's and My pics and neither of us took pictures there. Skinner took a bunch, but he hasn't posted his yet.
11:17pm – St. Jerome’s, stop #8, was less of a pub and more of a house that served beer and had a DJ in the backyard/alley. There we met a crazy man from Burma who spoke slurred English and laughed after everything he said. We just kept smiling and nodding to keep him happy even though we had no idea what he was saying.
11:46pm – after some aimless wandering and searching out for other bars, we decided to make a pitstop at McDonalds for some late-night grub and a bathroom break. Erin warned me as I entered the bathroom that there had been a food fight of some sort and from the looks of things in that bathroom, she was right.
12:13am – We contemplated entering a bar with fantastic live music emanating from the core, but were dissuaded by the bouncer who informed us that it was $20 to get in and that they would be closing up shop within a half hour or so.
12:24am – The night winding down and everyone tired from a wonderful night of wandering, eating, drinking, watching, and seeing… we headed home for a somewhat early night.
12:34am – Attempting to fall asleep in sub-arctic temperatures requires the ability to regulate core temperature at will, which I don't possess… so instead I slept in my corduroy pants and two shirts to try and stay warm. I’m not sure whether I woke up more from the freezing cold that night or that blistering heat the night before, but they were both interesting experiences I am not keen to relive any time soon.


Thursday January 8th, 2009
9:41am – Alarms again to get us up and out by 10am
10:21am – Library research and Nando’s prepares us for the day
11:33am – Various sight-seeing activities headed off by our quest for more graffiti art, of which there was plenty.
1:47pm – Lunch at a delicious little café (Skinny liked it so much he bought two of the exact same sandwich and saved one for later).
2:39pm – Federation square and walking along the river
3:30pm – splitting the group up while half of us went to the Casino to investigate that further and the other half went to the Eureka Skydeck tower to visit the 88th floor views. Skinner played blackjack against a dealer who I am convinced had to be dealing off the bottom of the deck or something… because he was able to attain a score of no less than 20 and no more than 21 nearly every single time regardless of what he was dealt. It was a fun and lazy afternoon walking around and admiring everything the city had to offer.
6:00pm – meeting up at the bus station to catch our bus to the airport
8:15pm – Take-off for Sydney.
10:49pm – We’re back in the good old house in Rose Bay… waiting for Taylor to come home from work so we could tell him all the fun stories.


And there you have it folks… that was our time in Melbourne in a Nutshell. I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed reliving it while writing. Love you all.

Jesse “carpal tunnel” Meredith