Tag Archives: Travel

Day Nineteen – Melbourne – Surprises and Angry Neighbours

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Finally I had a great breakfast. It was so good to have a proper hotel breakfast so I went to town on a good vegetarian fry up. We spent most of the day wondering around town checking out all of the Christmas decorations. It’s pretty safe to say that Australians don’t really know how to do Christmas. Federation square had domes of polystyrene to make ‘snow’ but it was just quite pathetic.

The afternoon was spent doing some shopping and I managed to get my secret Santa present. My dad got himself a haircut so my mum and I treated ourselves to a manicure. It’s definitely nice to be spoilt a little bit after three years as a student and now travelling. Everything is always on a shoestring.

My parents were still jet lagged and he huge breakfast meant that we weren’t too hungry so we had a small meal in the hotel and then waited in anticipation for the boys and girls to arrive. I hid in the cupboard and waited. Everyone came in to have champagne and after a little while I jumped out of the cupboard and surprised Ed and Angie. Ed didn’t have too much of a reaction but Angie jumped out of her skin screaming which was a great reaction to make. We cracked open the champagne and started to catch up. Not before too long a knock at the door came and a very aggressive man told us to be quiet and that there should not be more than two people to a room. So reluctantly we moved the part downstairs.

Catching up was good and it was so nice to have the boys around. After polishing off three bottles of champagne we all went to sleep and I slept happily.

Day Eighteen – Melbourne – Meeting the Parents

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My sleep was disjointed with regularly intervals of waking and when I fully awoke I wasn’t quite sure where I was. I showered to open my eyes and packed my bags to check out. After checking out and storing my luggage I took a stroll down to Centreplace to find somewhere to eat breakfast. I found a cute little cafe and ordered myself som healthy juice and porridge with poached pears. I love poached pears. I took time to sit in the hustle and bustle of Melbourne, write my blog and write in my MakeItCount diary. It was damn pleasant and nice to be able to sit outside without sweating all my clothes off.

I then walked into federation square and took a look around before hiking up to the hotel with all my bags to meet my parents. I spent the afternoon chilling with them in the rooftop pool and relaxing in the hotel. We then went out for dinner at Mrs. Parma’s a restaurant with specialises in parmigianas. It was a nice night but I was glad to get a good nights sleep due to excitement for seeing Ed and Angie the next day.

Day Seventeen – Townsville to Melbourne – Crystal Creeks and City Streets

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Matt took a half day off work today so I spent the morning packing up my bag to leave and then around lunchtime Matt came back from work. We headed to GYO to pick up some Karachi chicken, the best God damn chicken you’ll ever have in your life. We then made the hour drive out to Little Crystal Creek to go creek swimming. I did a lot of this when I was in Cairns and it never ever gets old. This is probably one of my favourite things to do ever. I never get bored and could just stay there for the rest of my life. If I lived here I would just head down to the creek at the weekends with my friends and go rock jumping, rock sliding and swimming in the refreshing creek.

We did a lot of jumping and damn it was scary, probably one of the biggest rocks I’ve jumped off but there were like four other people there doing it and one thing about me is if I see others having fun I can’t miss out on it. I needed to be doing what they were doing and I needed to be doing it just as well if not better. Unfortunately we couldn’t spend a whole host of time here because we needed to get back on the road to get me back in time to catch my flight.

When I arrived back home I quickly showered and changed round before heading the the airport. We arrived at the airport forty minutes before my flight was meant to depart. Pretty nerve racking when you’re in the queue to check your bags and the flight is already boarding but oh well, I caught the flight and had maximum amount of time in the creek earlier so cutting it fine pays off.

Once on the plane I caught up on writing and just chilled for the three hours. A crazy German man sat next to me trying to tell me all about his life. It was quite an interesting life with many stories but he wouldn’t listen to anything I said in return and it started to grate on me. I’ve found that a lot of peope love talking about themselves and don’t spend enough time listening, particularly men. It becomes quite frustrating.

When the plane arrived we disembarked onto the runaway and the first thing I notice about Melbourne is ‘damn it’s cold’. It’s meant to be summer here but 12 degrees ain’t summer to me. As the flight was domestic the whole journey was pretty easy and it took me no time to be outside and boarding the skybus into the city. Once in the city I took a taxi to my hostel and checked in. The hostel was really nice and pretty quirky but everyone in my room was asleep and it was hard to see which beds were taken so I stumbled around and found a bed which seemed empty and climbed in. I spent a good few hours awake just in case there was an owner of the bed who may come back at anytime and wake me up but I soon fell asleep.

Day Sixteen – Townsville – Happiness is Both Alone and Together

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I spent the day by myself today with a car. I had to get up early to take Emily to work and to go to my doctors appointment so it meant that I had a perfect fresh start to have a full day. This is definitely something I needed after all the lazy days.

After my appointment finished I went to the rock pool for a good swim. It felt so good to have some proper exercise and to just swim up and down like I’m used to and I know I’m good at. After this I drove up to Castle Hill overlooking Townsville. I climbed over the railings and down to a rock outcrop far away from the path. I sat there for two hours by myself and looking at the phot above you’ll know why. I could sit there all day.

I had to leave this gorgeous view to go meet Matthew for lunch. We went back to the place we had cocktails the other night for a greasy pulled pork sandwich. It was good, I really like the hipsterisms in Townsville. I just didn’t expect them to had made it here and I like it. I think out of all of the fads there have been, emo, punk etc, hipsters is the best. We may have to agree to disagree.

After lunch I headed over to the aquarium and spent the rest of the afternoon there. Aquariums are some of my most favourite places in the world. I sat for a good hour watching this one fish. He had so much character and he seemed so happy and lively, he was very entertaining. I could definitely relate to him and I think he liked me to. Just before I left I checked out the turtle hospital where they bring in sick turtles and nurse them back to health before releasing them into the wild again. It made my heart break. There were turtles who had swallowed plastic bags which makes them float and if they float they can’t dive down to collect food so they start to starve to death. Other turtles had been hit by boats cracking their shell. A turtle shell is connected to their spine so it’s like a boat hitting you in your back and snapping your spine, paralysing you. It was nice to see people doing something for these turtles but there was only enough room for ten turtles in the hospital. There must be so many other turtles who are also being affected by man made issues. I just wanted to write about this here to raise a little extra awareness around the world.

We went out for dinner tonight as it was my last no to in Townsville. We went down to a surfbar on the seafront where it was nice to here the sea waves as we ate. Another one of my favourite places is the sea at night, it’s so calming and romantic and reminiscent of good times in my youth. After dinner we headed to the new chocolate shop which had opened in town. The queue was pretty massive but we waited anyway getting plenty of free chocolate samples. I bought some chocolates for us and for myself I bought a small pot of liquid chocolate. Why not indulge?

We then went home to nurse out chocolate comas and had a little play on Emily’s new PS3 playing buzz. I was much better at it than I expected to be.
Today was an absolutely quality day. I loved every minute of it, packing it full and exploring as much as I could in Townsville and ending it happy and safe with my family. Let’s hope there are plenty more of these days in the next week.