Hello all!
Since I last posted Devon and I have moved around a lot. Firstly I would like to talk about the places we stayed in Sydney. We stayed there a week and stayed at three different hostels. I guess you could say we are a bit picky with where we stay. We started in Wake up a converted shopping centre. This place was in Chinatown and was a hub for young adults who like to be social very often. The upkeep of the place was below our par, the kitchen was not very clean and some of the burners were not operational :( In addition to that one of the two elevators for the seven flours was broken creating a significant overcrowding in the elevators and so we would climb the six flights to avoid waiting half an hour to access the elevator. We then moved with in two nights to the YHA The Rocks just off the water side. This was a five star hostel with views from the top deck of the bridge and the Opera House. It was a clean place with kitchens BBQs lots of seating wonderful people and built on an archaeological site that you could learn about who had lived in the area before. The place was great to say the least. Once we had covered a lot of Sydney we decided to mosey on over to the famous Bondi beach. Now that we were fond of YHAs we decided to stay at Bondi Beach YHA which was not as fantastic as the last (you had to put a deposit down for cutlery) but suited us just fine with clean functioning facilities.
The beach down the road was amazing with gorgeous waves and the smell almost reminded me of home, but not quite. During our three night stay in Bondi we also toured the Opera house. This was wonderful the thought and care that went into the building astonishes me despite my recent architectural study of the building during my theatre degree. The roof was designed after the sphere shape as a guide and gluing the cement pieces together with a strong poxy. The seats were designed by a doctor to be the most comfortable possible. There is much more to the purposeful design of the building. We also went to Manly Beach were I played beach volleyball and bathed in the sun while the waves crashed along the sandy shores. However our bliss was short lived as a big shower of rain drenched us after a couple of hours.
We left after three nights and headed on the Greyhound to Canberra. We enjoyed staying at another YHA making yummy hot dogs and taking it easy. We checked out the Portrait Gallery, the Mint and the Parliament building the next day. We enjoyed the art work of local artists and of Martin Schoeller, who has a unique way of taking photos of well known people.
After one night we headed on a nine hour trip to Melbourne. This was not like Magic bus where we could stop every once in a while to see some amazing thing or another and got to know some amazing people. Now we have to rely on the hostels to meet people so we are even more picky about the places we stay.
Arriving in Melbourne at 11 o'clock at night we were glad to find our hostel close by but unfortunately the hostel wasn't in a great area and the facilities were far below standards in cleanliness, kitchen supplies, working lockers, a curfew for sound, and complete bedding. We booked it out of there at 8 am the next morning. This hostel was called Melbourne Connection, do not stay there if you are even in Melbourne. We have learned through out the process that you need to book several days ahead in Australia unlike New Zealand where you can usually book the day before. After a lot of difficulty, frustration, and phone calls we found a place to stay at a brand new (redone) hostel tonight called Bozo's Backpackers. This place is good, small bright and with free internet!!!!! We have enjoyed our stay and like the manager, we recommend it if you can't stay at a YHA or another of your favourite spots. Tomorrow we are back to our beloved YHA for three nights where we explore the central area of Melbourne before we go to Habitat HQ hostel in St. Kilda which is an area near the water. We are excited to explore these two areas including a place that is like little Italy where we might plan to have our one month anniversary of our trip/Valentines dinner. I won't tell you about what we plan on doing anymore so I have things to tell you in the next blog. One of the things we have done here is checked out a local mall that had an old building within it, we presumed that the mall was built around it. Within this mall there was a pancake place that was called Lovely where they served pancakes with ice cream which we got for two for one!!! It was mind blowing. They served ice cream with most of the menu. We are tempted to go there for Valentines but it is up in the air for now.
There are no pictures with this post because I couldn't hook up my camera but I will do that within the next few days, I promise. I want to thank everyone who has checked my blog. Please continue to do so I hope to keep it entertaining and fun to read.
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