Melbourne, Australia - freezing in the summer, but friendly as can be

We finally arrived in Melbourne, and made it just in time to give the car back to the rental company.
Just in time because Oprah was in town and welcomed us with a big traffic jam that almost prevented us from returning the car on time. Good thing Rony always tries to be a few hours early on everything, it makes Talia on time...

Maybe because Oprah was in town, a demonstration for WikilLeaks was there, too. Judging by the first 2 hours in Melbourne, it seemed like a lot was going on in this city...

The place we were supposed to couch surf in was a bit far from downtown, in a little suburb called Box Hill. It took us a while to get there, but we definitely didn't expect what we saw: The owners were very nice and warm, but the place was just a mess and dirty. Apparently they had a lot of guests that weekend, and they had only their garage for us to sleep in. And we had to share our "room" with some rabbits. Strange.

But the hardest part was the sleeping room condition: It was cold and very windy. And the garage was not exactly isolated. Far from it. Rony was freezing and had to sleep dressed up in his sleeping bag. Talia was a bit better and just slept dressed up. Anyway, we couldn't stay (or even go to the toilet) in a place like this, and we decided that no matter what, we had to find another place. Fortunately, Talia has a friend in Melbourne and when she heard of what happened to us, came to our rescue right away. Yey for Twitter! We heart @FayG29 !

She opened her house to us and even if it was such a short notice, welcomed us as we were her family.
She prepared us lunch, and after we calmed down and finally took a shower, we went to visit the city. We weren't disappointed. Melbourne is a very living city, with a great architecture, and while it's a big city, it is not overwhelming as big cities can be.

Federation Square

So we started where everybody starts in Melbourne: Federation Square. That's like an entry point to downtown Melbourne. There is nothing special to do there except plan our visit of the city (great tourist information center there) and apparently a great, free art gallery, but we didn't know it then.

In front of the square stands Flanders Street Station, which is like the central station of Melbourne, although there is a Melbourne central station elsewhere. A bit confusing maybe. Well, let's say it's the main entry point of the city.

From there, downtown is built like a grid and it's quite easy to navigate. So we decided to just walk around and stop wherever we'd like. After a few minutes walk, we arrived in front of the Regent Theatre where apparently the AFI (Australian Film Institute) award ceremony was taking place. And movie fans as us thought, "Well, that's so nice to prepare such an event for us!" So we saw a few famous Australian movie stars, or at least we guess since we didn't know them. Later we saw on the news that William Defoe was there too but we missed him.

After Oprah the day before and the Wikileaks demonstration, it looked like Melbourne is much more than what we expected. Melbourne is a great city to walk around in. So much to architecture to see there, many churches and even if it looks like an unordered mix of old and new buildings, it actually looks very harmonic. The Christmas decorations were a nice addition to the surrounding beauty.

We walked through Bourke Street Mall where there was a puppet display of the Nutcracker on the department store windows. Like in Printemps in Paris. Rony kept saying that this city reminded him a lot of Paris and he could definitely live in this city.

Now it's a good time for a little pause and tell about Melbourne people: I don't know if we were just lucky, but the people here are soooo nice! A few examples:

1. We opened a little map of the city to see where to head to, not because we were lost, and a second later someone came to us and asked us if we needed directions. Free of charge! Genuine kindness
2. We were on our tram to get to the city and the bus driver suddenly stopped the tram, went out and helped a couple to carry their baby stroller in, and even gave them tips about which doors are the best to come through.
3. We were in St Kilda's Esplanade and we saw a tram stop near us. The driver opened the doors and asked a couple who was just sitting in the station where they were heading. So the couple answered and he just said "I'm going there too, just get in." The couple didn't wave the driver, he just stopped.
4. Each time we asked for directions or information, the people there were so helpful and nice. It's hard to explain every situation, but we had a guy who just saw we asked for direction from the bus driver and suggested we see the bus route on his IPad and find the street we needed. And the driver, even if he didn't know the street we needed, paid attention to where he was going and stopped near the street we were looking for, even if there was no bus stop there.

So that also was part of the city charms.

End of pause.

As we were walking around town, we kept seeing signs for the musical Mary Poppins, which is apparently the big thing going on in Melbourne now. Well, that and the Bon Jovi concert from the night before, which had the entire city in Bon Jovi shirts, caps, and backpacks, singing Bon Jovi songs non-stop.

Eventually we came across the Queen's Theatre, where Mary Poppins is showing, and Rony suggested we go in and see if there are any tickets for shows while we're in town.  And wouldn't you know it? We got tickets for $30 each! We'll be going next Sunday when we get back from Tasmania. :-)

In the evening, after a long walk all around downtown, through Chinatown, and a small dinner, we headed back to Fay's home, happy and tired.









We will post pics on the next post. :-)