Take my scissors, but not my ID: Melbourne part 1

This past weekend I went to Melbourne (pronounced more like Melbin) with Gina, Ean, Jeff, and Chris. I left Thursday morning with Gina and the guys met us there Thursday night. The title of this post comes from one of our first somewhat ridiculous experiences during traveling. In the airport, they never once checked my ID when I was getting on the plane. Not to get my boarding pass, not to go through security, not to go on the plane. They did, however, take away my tiny safety scissors. Seriously? Oh, airport security.

Also, who would have known that the Melbourne airport isn't in Melbourne? There are two different airports and I figured they were like JFK and LaGuardia--both very accessible. I was very wrong. The other Melbourne airport, which was actually in Avalon, was about an hour from the city. It was like flying into MacArthur airport or something. We booked the hostel that we did because they had a free airport transfer but of course it was from the other airport. Well, live and learn I guess.

After the flight and hour bus ride we arrived at the Hotel Discovery, a hostel in the central business district. We had a 6-bed room and it was dorm style (communal bathroom). The beds were actually pretty comfortable and nothing was falling apart, so it was promising overall. Luckily we were traveling with guys who also have some pretty low standards.

Before the guys got there, Gina and I decided to walk around a little bit. There was a market, the Queen Victoria Market, right by the hostel so we decided to walk through there first but it was starting to close down (at 2 pm!). There was a food court there though so we stopped and had some lunch before continuing our adventures. As per the recommendations of a friend we walked down to Federation Square. There were a bunch of awesome buildings; it was definitely really artsy. We past some shopping malls but they were RIDICULOUSLY expensive. We didn't even bother stopping to go shop. Just past Federation Square was Queen Victoria Garden (detecting a pattern yet?). It was really pretty and we were exhausted so we ended up just laying down in the grass for a little while. Eventually we decided to get up and head back to the hostel and wait for the guys to arrive. Once we were all settled in we decided to go get some dinner. We walked back in the direction of Federation Square because we passed a lot of restaurants but by the time we got there most had stopped serving food. So, we ate at this Italian place run by Asian people with Australian accents (multicultural at its best). We headed back to get ready to go out. However, by the time we got back the buses and trams had stopped running, and even if they were running we would still probably have a problem because of our unfamiliarity (later we realized they were really easy to figure out). So, we decided to hang out in the hostel bar, The Velvet Underground. It was techno night and there were probably a total of 15 people there including us. We just observed some crazy people dancing, watched this one creepy guy walk around aimlessly talking to himself (more stories about this guy coming), and planned out our next few days. We called it an early night so we could get up early on Friday to start another day of adventures.

Well, that's Melbourne part 1. Much more to come hopefully tomorrow, but now its definitely time for bed.