CSI Melbourne

Today we went to Fitzroy, an alternative suburb a couple of miles north-east of Melbourne city centre. Most of the action is along one main road, Brunswick St, where we saw some weird and wonderful clothes shops, bookshops and pubs. It took us an hour or so to do the ‘strip’ before we stopped for a chocolate milkshake at one of Melbourne’s fancy chocolate café’s. Delicious! We then headed back towards the city centre and stopped for lunch in the beautiful Royal Botanical Gardens. As with most major cities, they always claim that they have the best this or that. Melbourne claim they have the best botanical gardens. Whether they are or aren’t isn’t really important, however they were indeed very impressive. A stop off at the Olympic Park to take in the Melbourne Cricket Ground, where the 1956 Olympics were held, before heading back to the hostel rounded off our site-seeing for the day.

It was returning to the hostel that we realised some of our stuff had been stolen. On the trip so far we have tried our best to be really careful; always locking our stuff away in our bags, hiding keys, and taking as much of our important stuff with us at all times as possible. But unfortunately that wasn’t enough. Someone had eaten our sausages out of the communal fridge!! A quick trip to the supermarket put things back in order and normal service was resumed.

We had initially planned to have a quiet evening writing our blogs and reading etc, but we had noticed a bar round the corner with some decent deals on drinks this evening. It was a spur of the moment decision, but at 9:30pm (not far off our normal bedtime!) we decided to head down there. Drinks are so expensive in Australia as the government taxes the drinks industry heavily. It basically means a pint of beer for £5-7 is the norm. Being able to buy drinks (including pints) for around £2, like we are used to at home, was a bit of a novelty. It was a nice evening only spoilt once we got back to the hostel and the morons in the room next door woke us up with their loud music and shouting at 3am. We had earplugs in, but the base on their music was so loud the bed was vibrating. Andrea asked them to turn it down, which they did, however 5 minutes later the music was back up to previous levels. Thankfully we both managed to get to sleep within an hour. I did think my days of living like I’m university halls were behind me though. How wrong