Americans in Melbourne

 After being in Melbourne just two weeks, I ventured back to say my final farewells to Melbourne friends and welcome the arrival of my good friend Thea. Thea is down here on at working-holiday visa for the year with hopes of either staying longer or perhaps switching to a student visa to study .

Of all my friends to say they would come visit or want to travel and get out of the rut known as the ‘United States’, Thea has been the only one to do it so far. After a bit of procrastination I booked my Thursday flight the night before and was stuck with Tiger Airways yet again. While I don’t dislike them, because I feel domestic travel should be at it’s cheapest, the staff are typically rude, they issue receipts NOT actual boarding passes and the Tiger Airways terminal at Melbourne International is a good 10-minute walk from the main airport and another 5 minute walk just to get to the aircraft on the tarmac. Not to mention when booking, they make it seem like you HAVE to choose your seat, but if you do, you pay between $5-$20 for it. Instead, save yourself the money and ask for a window/exit row seat when you check-in. Boom $20 saved So far, my best would have to be Virgin Australia. Richard Branson knows what’s up!

I had Marc drop me off at Gold Coast airport and I arrived in beautiful cloudy and rainy Melbourne at noon. Thea had already landed and passed through customs and quarantine so we called the hostel and they came to pick us up. At first, I was sceptical of Thea’s hostel choice because it was located in St. Kilda but it proved to be an excellent location. Anyone traveling to Melbourne, I encourage you to either stay at the Space Hotel in the CBD area (where Craig and I stayed in January) or at the Habitat HQ (where I stayed with Thea). The trams were located right outside the hostel and was only a 20 minute ride to the city and was also a 5 minute ride to Chapel Street where all the nightlife can be found.

We briefly took a nap before heading out to get her a working phone number and show her the city. Overall, we were in bed about 10ish as she was jet-lagged and I barely got any sleep the night before (I never sleep well the day before a flight). Friday, we headed to China Town to meet up with Claire for some Chinese and bubble tea before saying goodbye to her and heading ANZ to get Thea a bank account. We ended up scratching that idea as the wait time was way too long, so ventured to Big W so she could get some flip flops, the river walk, Crown Casino (where I lost $20 on red, haha) and then finally Max Brenners.

We ended up back at the hostel before relaxing a bit once again (the sun takes it out of you). Ended up getting up around 10pm before heading to Electric Ladyland for a few drinks and to say goodbye to friends there. One of them, being Bridie, I will always love and cherish. There are not many women out there that I can tolerate let alone would not mind dating and Bridie is definitely one of them. Words cannot describe my love for this woman, but I’ll save my lovey-dovey Bridie blog for another day.

After quite a few gin and tonics, headed back to the hostel and up at 0930 for 1000 check-out. I said my goodbyes to Thea and headed back to Melbourne airport to fly to Brisbane in time for Future Music Festival. Overall, I love Melbourne but don’t know if I could ever live there. I think the hipster/’culture’ scene is a bit much for me. But definitely a far better place than Brisbane and of course, the Gold Coast. Next stop is Future Music Festival, final week of work and then wrapping up last minute affairs before my flight to Sydney on March 15^th followed by flight back to Seattle March 17^th.

Until then…

Cheers

-H

Sydney vs. GRE

There’s something about the big city that I absolutely love. Not just the sounds of cars honking, trains speeding by and continuous construction, but the feeling that everyone walking around has a purpose and somewhere to be or somewhere they are going. It excites for my own venture out into the real world when I get to dawn an expensive suit, carry a briefcase and carry two phones at once (ok maybe a bit far).

My trip to Sydney, much like my trip to Auckland, New Zealand, was a relatively short one that only served one purpose and that was for my GRE. I hitched a ride from Jimmy to the airport to save on the hassle of taking the bus before checking in and heading to the gate.

I want to go off on a slight tangent here and state that although Virgin Air considers itself a discount airline, I absolutely love what Richard Branson has done with the model of the company. Customer service agents greet you by name on check-in, ask you how your day is going, why you’re going to your destination AND my first time flying with Virgin, they upgraded me to an exit row seat! Needless to say, I love the customer service associated with it (and the hot staff they employ) even if it means I’m paying a bit more than flying with Jetstar.

I tried my best to sleep on the plane since I had to work all night but it wasn’t happening. So I arrived in Sydney exhausted, groggy and ready for bed. I purchased a multi-transport pass for $61 and that allowed for unlimited travel on any of the trains, buses and ferries including leaving and coming to the airport. Although now that I look back I did not take the full advantage of the $61, the pass is good for a week, so anyone going to Sydney, I strongly recommend getting it. Moreover, last time being here Sydney was lacking in the apps department for travellers whom have an iPhone and they have greatly improved this time around with transit schedules and such, so really helped out. Far better than my time here in 2007 in which I only had a brick phone Nokia.

I caught the train to the city and then a bus from the city to Cass’s place where I would be staying for my two days in town. She has an awesome place on a hill that has a great view of the city nightlife as well as the quietness of any suburb. She gave me a tour of the place; I met her roommates and then after an evening of chatting decided to finally pass out. I was a bit nervous, as I had not done any studying that night to prepare for my afternoon GRE test the next day, but oh well…

I didn’t sleep well that night and woke up with a kink in my neck resulting in a pretty painful morning. I left the house with Ally for the city as she was on her way to work and figured might as well travel with someone who knows the area. I’m glad I did because my intentions were to go to the library at Circular Quay to study until my exam and then head to it at 1pm. She advised me there was the state library (which I didn’t even know about), which was closer and offered more amenities than the local library. So I headed there, found a seat in the café and began studying furiously for the next 4 hours.

I skimmed the material for the last minute cram session before realising I hadn’t looked over anything regarding shapes! It sounds stupid now that I look back, but to completely forget a whole section, at this point I told myself “screw it”. I grabbed some KFC before heading to the testing centre.

To spare the long boring details regarding the test and to avoid getting sued by the GRE people, I’ll just say it wasn’t what I had expected. After the exam was finished it gave me a raw number regarding what my scores were without my verbal reasoning essays (as those would be graded by humans). I’ll spare the details now and wait until I get back my official results before announcing anything, but at this time all I’ll say is the ends justifies the means, clearly.

After the exam, I walked around a bit before heading back to the library to do some email checking, podcast downloading and connecting with Lani to meet up for dinner. She told me she was in Kings Cross, which I shuddered after hearing because that place is absolutely disgusting (and it’s apparently improved over the years!). We ate at a local hole in the wall Thai place, which was pretty spicy but also amazing. Afterwards, we went our separate ways and I headed back to Cass’s place before relaxing for a bit and heading to bed.

I woke up Thursday morning to the sound of rain, which I wasn’t to pleased with as I was not expecting it to rain until Thursday evening. I packed my stuff and headed to library to drop off for a few hours since they had hourly lockers, so that I could walk around the city as well as head to the harbour to take pictures of the bridge and opera house. Sadly, the rain was constant throughout most of the morning, so I bought a $15 umbrella to attempt to keep me somewhat dry.

I first headed to the rocks and took some pictures of the bridge as well as the opera house across the way before making my way over to the opera house. Luckily at this point the rain had stopped so I was able to get a few pictures as well as Skype my buddy Diaz from back home to show him the sights and sounds of Sydney Harbour. A pretty low-key day before I grabbed my stuff, headed to the airport and caught the 3pm flight back to the Gold Coast.

Overall, the trip was pretty good. A bit unfortunate that there were many friends of mine I didn’t get to catch up with but since airfare is relatively cheap to Sydney ($150 on a good day), I am planning to go back in August on my days off but with the mindset of relaxing and not worrying about a test. There are already plans in the works to go see an opera or symphony at the opera house! More to come.

Until then,

Cheers and 再见!

-H