March 13th-16th my self and six other friends from Uni went off to go explore Melbourne! We flew out of Ballina airport which is a half an hour drive from Lismore. Let’s just say this was the smallest airport I have been too. With most airports you arrive two hours early in advance to beat the rush and to give yourself enough time before flight departure. Our group did just that. Not knowing beforehand that this airport was so small it literally took us about 10 minutes to get through the whole process of checking in and finding our gate (which was only two steps away from security and everything else). There are only two gates there as well and another cool thing is we had to walk outside and onto the plane. Something I have never done before so I was quite excited walking outside to the plane and onto the stairs.

Once we landed in Melbourne we took a bus to the main part of the city. We were off to find our hostel. We would be staying at Green Backpackers.

Since I have been in Australia, Melbourne is different than any of the other cities I have gone to since I have been here. The weather was much cooler and there was no humidity compared to how it is back in Lismore. I also didn’t quite pack accordingly for this trip. Since the weather was so nice and warm all I packed was t shirts and tanks and shorts. No pants, ect. To say the least I was a bit chilly throughout the weekend. When in Melbourne, the atmosphere reminded me of the Twin Cities back home, and also New York City, it just had this cityvibe. The architecture was beautiful though. There are all these cool building designs and art everywhere you go.

We got to our hostel and checked in. Allie, Synthia, Dayna, were all in a room together, along with abby and alec being in a room together, and somehow Donna and myself were put into 6 bedroom rooms by ourself. I would be sharing a room and sleeping with five other strangers for three nights. It wasn’t too bad though.

After putting out bags in our rooms we went to go walk around and explore the city. We also signed up to do a pub crawl through our hostel that night so we only had a few hours to go explore. While walking the city we happened to find a Lindt Chocolate Store/Cafe…Let’s just say I was in chocolate heaven.

After walking around it was back to our hostel and the start of our pub crawl. It only costed us $5 and we got free drinks! As you can see I was excited because free booze is better than paying for it. Especially when it’s super expensive here.

The pub crawl consisted of the 6 of us, along with a guy from Germany, and two others from France. By the end of the night we became close friends with one another. Overall the pub crawl was a ton of fun. We ended up going to two bars, and then ending the night at a Mexican bar that also had a dance floor. Overall it was a good night.

The next day we woke up and went off again to explore the city. The Grand Prix was also going on this weekend so our friend Allie went to that on Friday. The rest of us paid $5 and hopped on a bus that took us all around the city. While riding it, our driver informed us of what we were passing by, along with the history of the monuments, parks, attractions. We could get on and off at these stops. Our first stop was at the Victorian Markets. This place was soo cool! And soo big! There were these huge sheds with vendors galore. Definitely a great place to go souvenir shopping. Literally everything and anything was sold there. It had it all. After going to the Market we grabbed some lunch and went off exploring the rest of the day. Saturday as well we walked around and explored as well we also went to Sea Life. Overall it was a good weekend.