The guys were flying home today so we decided to split up. I went over to the Queen Victoria Market after breakfast for a little by myself just to walk around and also to get another doughnut... the things were addicting. When I was walking around part of the market we initially missed (it was that big) I passed this guy selling wine. They had some in bottles but most was just in barrels. The company was "ReWine." Basically, if you brought your own wine bottle you got $2 off the price of the wine. It was an awesome concept. Recycling can only do so much; reusing is where it is at. So he let me try some of the wines (yes, this is at like 10am) and I was talking to him about things to do in Melbourne and also about the company (very eco-friendly). After all that I decided to get this Spanish wine that was incredible. Wine in hand I headed back to the hostel.
Gina and I found out about a craft fair in St. Kilda and figured we would take the bus to check that out. St. Kilda is a suburb of Melbourne with a beach (if you can even call it that), a boardwalk, a bunch of stores, and Luna Park (an amusement park). It was real cold, especially by the water. We walked around for a while looking at the craft tents. There were a bunch of people selling jewelry, pictures, clothing, and even cutting boards and other woodwork. I got another souvenir from that craft fair. We walked down to the beach and it was pretty disappointing. There was debris everywhere--bottles, garbage, etc. Pretty depressing. We didn't really know what else to do there so we just headed back to the city to continue our adventures for the day.
By the time we got back to the city we were definitely thinking about lunch. We decided to go back to Lygon St. (the Italian area). When traveling, do as the locals do. With that in mind, we followed a bunch of people into the busiest Italian restaurant on the street. The food was real good, but still nothing like home. After lunch we walked around more parks and saw a group of like 100+ people on speed bikes drinking beer. Yes, very bad combination. I went up to one of them and asked what they were doing and it was something like a skidding competition. It didn't really make sense when he was explaining it but we stayed and watched for a little. Basically, each person had a turn to race up to this line and then they had to skid on their tires and the person who skid the farthest won. It was interesting to say the least. We definitely didn't stay too long. We continued our walk and passed the Melbourne Museum which pretty much looked like a rubix cube. We just continued to wander around and made it back to Federation Square all the way on the other side of the city. We walked through the back alleys of the Square and saw the most amazing graffiti that I had ever seen. During my time here I have come to realize that Australians see graffiti as art, not destruction. It was pretty cold so after that we just decided to head back to our hostel.
The Melbourne Underground Film Festival was going on the entire time we were in Melbourne and we were planning on going to the closing night on Sunday. However, when we found out how far away it was and that transportation was somewhat unreliable we just decided to stay in and drink the wine I got at the market. We called it a pretty early night since we had to wake up early and check out on Monday.
I tried to wake up extra early on Monday and find a post office to ship the gift that I got for my parents. It is somewhat large and is going to be difficult to get home. Long story short, the post office wouldn't ship it and I couldn't find the FedEx that I got directions to. So about two hours after I left I returned to the hostel and Gina and I proceeded on our last day of Melbourne adventures. Initially we were going to take a bus down to the Docklands area but we realized that we really didn't have enough time. So instead we headed down to our favorite area, Lygon St, once again for some gelato. It was pretty fabulous. I got a Toblerone flavor and Gina got lemon and blood orange. When we were done we walked around the outskirts of the city a little, saw the huge rock climbing wall, saw the restaurant "Witches in Britches" (which we initially thought was Witches and Bitches, the sign wasn't too clear) and then walked back to our hostel because it was time to catch the bus back to the airport.
The ride to the airport was easy, but once we got to the airport there were plenty of problems with my luggage. They made me check my bag and the gift I got for my parents and I was convinced the latter was going to get destroyed. Luckily it got to Sydney undamaged and we were able to get on the train and head home after a long weekend of traveling. Or almost a week of traveling...
And it was going to be 3 days until I was back in the Sydney airport...
Well, that's Melbourne. Finally.
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