Melbourne: Day 1

"...how did we end up in Chinatown...?"

So I'm going to do my Melbourne blog in three separate posts by day so as to not be too long or overwhelming. I'll post links at the bottom of this post to the next two days once I've finished them.

Thursday morning at 5:00, Christy, Alex and I all rolled out of bed and towards the area where our taxi was waiting. The taxi took us to the train station, where we then took an hour and a half long train ride to the Brisbane airport. Although incredibly tired, we were super pumped for our new adventure in Melbourne! Once we got to the airport, we were amazed at how easy everything was. We had checked in for our flight the night before and got our boarding passes via text message and since we weren't checking any bags, we got to go straight to security. The three of us were all prepared with our little baggies of appropriately sized liquids and everything ready to go, but it turns out security in Australia is a lot looser than it is in the states. We didn't have to show any tickets or identification and could leave our shoes on. They didn't check for liquids, although I forgot to take a pair of nail scissors out of my makeup bag and they confiscated it...

Even to board the plane, we didn't have to show any ID of any kind, just the text that showed our ticket number. We were a little worried because we hadn't heard great reviews of the airline we were using but the tickets were cheap so we went for it anyway. The seats were super cramped, which wasn't a huge problem for my little legs, but a little worse for Alex's. There was visible water vapor coming out of the insides of the plane all over the place thanks to the air conditioning, and aside from it looking slightly concerning, it wasn't a problem. After a quick two and a half hour plane ride, we landed in Melbourne! We grabbed a taxi and headed into the city to get our hostel!

After some research online, we were booked to stay at a hostel called The Nunnery, located only a few minutes from the heart of downtown, which was an old convent converted into a big hostel. They told us they had messed up our reservation and because of that, our first night was upgraded to a private three bed room in the guest house next door, but that we had to wait an hour for it to be cleaned. We left our stuff with the desk staff and headed out to wander the city. The hostel was in an area of town called Fitzroy which we were told was a very up and coming, hipster area. We all agreed as we walked around that we were waaay too mainstream to fit in there, but there were a lot of cute little restaurants and shops. We ended up eating at a little African restaurant called Django Django and it was so good! If you know me well at all, you'll know I'm a very picky eater so you're probably like "Maggie? Eating at an African restaurant?" Well rest assured that I got a chicken schnitzel sandwich (my new favorite meal), which although not quite an African cuisine, was still very very good. On our way back to the hostel, we stopped in a bakery and ate some delicious dessert.

Melbourne harbor

By the time we got back to the hostel, the room was ready so we grabbed our bags and headed next door to the guest house. It was alarmingly nicer, calmer and more quiet than the main dorm and it became obvious why. There were only eight or nine rooms, all of which were private with two or three beds. Our room had three single beds, a big flat screen TV, a fire place, a mini fridge, and plenty of space for the three of us. We were basically in heaven. There were two bathrooms that we shared with only one other room also, which was so nice. Turns out, that room usually books for $185 a night, while we paid a nice $32 for the night... we definitely lucked out!

After a brief rest and getting ready, we hopped on the free city shuttle to explore. We ended up getting off at a stop by the harbor first and taking some pictures. The city was absolutely beautiful. It reminded me a lot of Seattle, which just happens to be my favorite US city.

We then hopped on the shuttle again to go downtown, where we spent most of our evening just wandering and getting totally lost in an amazing way. It was seriously one of the coolest things I've ever done. Somehow we ended up in Chinatown several hours later, all the way on the opposite side of the city from where we got off the shuttle.  We were just walking around and bam, there it was, so we decided to stop for dinner! It was very different from the Chinatown's I've seen and heard of in the states. There were no sketchy fake designer shops or really anything sketchy at all happening. Just a bunch of Chinese restaurants. We wandered upon one that seemed decent and gave it a try. I (again being a picky eater) ordered honey chicken, which tasted exactly like funnel cake, which was incredibly alarming. Christy and I both ordered glasses of wine, which were brought to us by the man who had to be the crazy uncle of the family. "Sauvignon blanc?!?!?!?! Great pairing, great pairing!!" he kept saying as he poured at least two glasses worth of wine into our glasses, splashing it all everywhere in the process. Although the food was mediocre, we had a blast and made some hilarious memories! After that, we just wandered back to the hostel and enjoyed our one night in the lap of luxury, not really knowing the next night would be much worse.

Super casual in the Chinese restaurant

Read about the rest of my Melbourne adventure by following these links!
Melbourne Day 2 post!
Melbourne Day 3 post!