Hello steemians!
Welcome to my second post of "Discovering Australia". In case you missed the first one yesterday, check it out here:
https://steemit.com/travel/@colinco/discovering-australia-a-german-guy-downunder-part-1
In case you've read it, let me just continue with my story :-)
The bus from the airport took me to Flinders Street Station, the second biggest station in Melbourne (I suppose, I have not seen every single one). Leaving the bus, I met a friend from school who came there to pick me up. She has been in (a suburb of) Melbourne for 3 months before, working as an Au Pair. She knew the city well, she knew how everything worked, so we went to buy me a so-called myki card.
This card is for the use of public transport. You just load some money on it in a gas station, a seven-eleven or somewhere else, where the myki sign is shown - and you can use the tram, trains and busses in the whole city area. In my opinion public transport is quiet cheap in Melbourne, especially compared to other stuff like food and beverages - unfortunately i forgot the exact amount, but you pay for a flatrate ride for the whole day.
After receiving my personal myki, shown on the picture above, we headed towards a tram to get to our pre-booked hostel: The pint on punt. As it tells on its website, the best backpacker accommodation in St Kilda, Melbourne. I would not agree to that, but it was definetely okay! When arriving there, it was still breakfast time - and even though check in was only possible from 3 pm they let us have breakfast (consisting of toast and cereals). We let our big backpacks in the lugagge room of the hostel so my friend could show me around St Kilda.
St Kilda can be summarized as one of my absolute favourite places on earth. It is a city district from Melbourne, just a 25 min tram ride from the very center - directly at the beautiful tasmanian sea. (St Kilda Beach, seen on the pic above)
Furthermore St Kilda has to show it's central road called "carlisle street", where lies one restaurant or café to another - from italian to mexican or vegan - everything can be found.
Very famous is the theme park directly at the beach: Luna Park!
A small, but lovely park with a wooden coaster, some smaller attractions and a perfect place to buy churros - just to eat them right next to Luna park at the beach. (Yes, those paperwhite legs are mine. Yes, I already ate the first 6 of my 7 churros.)
My original plan was, to travel around with the friend I met in Melbourne. We wanted to buy a cheap car to sleep in and drive up the east coast. She organized a meeting with a guy selling his Mitsubishi Pajero with some additional stuff you needed for camping and cooking. 3000 bucks. We liked the car a lot, the guy seemed to be nice - so we wanted to buy the car. But of course, we did not have 3000 cash ready for that. So: We payed 100 $ to show him our interest and for him to keep the car until we had the money ready. During the next day, in hours of talking, my friend and I found out, that our plans were just too different. She wanted things I did not, I wanted some she did not. And even with making compromises our plans seemed still too different. So we said to ourselves: Who cares about the 100 Dollars, we do not need a car.
Nevertheless we spent a whole week in Melbourne together. My first night was really disturbing because I could not sleep at all due to my jet-lag, even though I had been awake for almost 40 hours at that point (except that 30-min nap on the plane) - and my room mates in the 3-bed dorm (a guy from israel and a french girl) had sex, thinking I was sleeping... Good for them, bad for me - and my jet lag took almost 5 days to get away.
When I walked around St Kilda the next day, it was cloudy. That's why I did not put sunscreen on - the worst mistake of my life! When I came back to the Hostel in the late afternoon, I recognized my burned skin: Legs, feet, arms and neck where red like blood! Unfortunately I do not have a picture, where you can see this sunburn, but let me tell you: It felt horrible! I could not sleep at all, my whole body burned, and of course I still had to see the rest of the city. Due to that sun burn, I looked like an idiot, when going up the Eureka Tower - the highest building in Melbourne with almost 300 meters. Take a look:
Luckily I took a longsleeve shirt with me and had my yoga pants on, to prevent myself from the sun. The scarf completed that awkward outfit...
Nonetheless I took some nice photos from up there on the eureka sky deck!
(Melbourne Cricket Ground, Tennis Courts from Australian Open)
(Flinders Street Station & Federation Square)
During the next days, I've been to many different places in Melbourne, but been to the St Kilda beach at least once a day. Even if I did not make it throughout the day, I made it during sunset. Because: At the beautiful St Kilda peer ...
... there live dozens of PENGUINS! Those small guys come out at the sunset and hundreds of people watch them every evening :-)
By the way: Even without the penguins the sunset at St Kilda is worth a look! (even on cloudy days)
... thats why I sat at the beach every evening anyway.
When I left Melbourne after 8 days (what makes Melbourne to my longest stay down there), I promised myself to get back there one day. Not only, because of those beautiful places like...
...the CBD
... the harbor + skyline (shot from St Kilda Peer)
... the botanical garden (shot from Eureka Tower)
... St Kilda Beach
... but due to all the memories I've made throughout my first days down under, due to the kindness of the open-minded people there and much more reasons!
I left with the night bus towards Sidney, where I arrived at 6:30 the next morning, with no single minute of sleep in the bus... more of that in tomorrow's post :-)
I am happy about upvotes, I am happy if you follow me to read more of my story from Australia - and I am happy if you leave a comment!
See you tomorrow
