After my late night, I woke up feeling rather tired, so lay in for a bit. I then decided it might be a good idea to use the brekkie voucher Jin had given me, so trudged downstairs, still rather bleary-eyed, to the refectory bit. It turned out that my voucher entitled me to a ‘continental breakfast’ – although a very strange continent it must be indeed; a piece of toast with jam, a bowl of rice pops, a coffee and an apple juice! Nevertheless, it wasn’t too bad and above all was free, so who am I to complain?!?!
Back in my room I still felt rather tired so I crawled into bed again, whilst I thought about what I would do. Then my phone rang and it was some of the people from the night before (Sarah and Tom), seeing if I wanted to go out! That was good as it meant I didn’t need to think about a plan any longer, so I got up and ready, then headed off out to meet them.
It was a really sunny day, so I insisted that we walk rather than take a tram, so Tom took the role of tour guide, being a Melburnian, and we walked into the city. As we walked he told me things about the different buildings and then admitted that he had made most of them up just to sound like he knew something of interest! I had already figured that out though, as a few of them I had already been past and read about in my Lonely Planet!
I think they thought I should do something ‘cultural’ and they already knew the things I had seen and done in Melbourne, from our conversations the night before, so they took me to the Art Gallery in Federation Square. This was something that I certainly wouldn’t have elected to do off my own back, but I am really glad we did! We wandered around the old arty stuff, lots of pictures/paintings of old Melbourne, which were quite cool, then a load of yawn-inducing art which told no story and did not rock my world at all, but then we came to the particular exhibition that they had wanted to see – Top Arts.
I had absolutely no idea what Top Arts was, but the pieces within the exhibition were great (apart from a couple) and all very different. Then I found out that Top Art is actually a state-wide competition for Year 12 art students (6th formers), these were the finalists and the eventual winner would be chosen from them. The work was amazing and it was hard to believe that it was someone’s coursework! Each piece had a little ‘blurb’ next to it, where the artist had described what they had aimed to do and how they had done it. We really enjoyed this section of the gallery and all had different favourites, but all agreed on the worst piece which looked more like someone had forgotten to do their piece for the competition and had then just thrown something together in three minutes, whereas every other piece looked like it had been painstakingly created over a long period of time!
After our culture-hit, we decided it was beer-o’clock, so headed to a nice bar next to the Yarra river (one that I had walked past on my long walk to the Botanical Gardens the other day). We sat outside and enjoyed our rather expensive pint of Green beer ($11 each – apparently it’s a carbon-offsetting beer?!?), then decided we’d done enough carbon-offsetting and should instead go find somewhere with carbon-emitting beer which might be a bit cheaper!
We headed a bit out of the city, back in the general direction of the hostel and found a pub that they go to quite often. We sat in the beer garden and chatted over a much more cost-efficient jug of Carlton Draught! Once that was done, the suggestion was to go find some lunch and we went to Lygon Street (known for being lined with great places to eat). In conversation earlier, it had arisen that I had not eaten sushi before, so Sarah insisted on us having that. I was a bit nervous as the concept of sushi really didn’t float my boat much, but they ordered us a selection of things, all of which were ‘beginner’ sushi and there was not a raw piece of fish to be found! We had tuna, spicy prawn and chicken teriyaki – all tasted good and were not scary at all! Randomly as we sat there eating our lunch, Tom’s mum and sister walked past – they don’t even live in Melbourne! It certainly is a small world here!
Next, Sarah decided we should walk in the general direction of Melbourne University, where she is a student, so we did just that and I saw lots of very modern looking buildings – they have heavily redeveloped it over the last couple of years. We went into a pub which clearly has a strong uni clientele and had another beer, before they walked me back to the hostel.
By this time, it was late afternoon and having walked about so much and still quite tired from my late night, I went to my room and had a nap, only to be woken up by a lot of noise – the nightmare sound that is ‘Japanese Rustling’! I can’t remember if I have mentioned this phenomenon before, but it has occurred on many occasion during my trip – to clarify it is not necessarily the rustling done by someone Japanese, but generally of someone of ‘Asian’ persuasion (well, ‘Asian’ as the Aussies would call it, we would probably say ‘eastern’ or ‘oriental’), the name ‘Japanese’ originates from a particular incident in Brisbane. Anyway, Japanese Rustling is where you are disturbed by an excessive (and when I say excessive, I really do mean excessive) amount of plastic carrier bag rustling. It’s like an orchestra of different sorts of carrier bags playing a concerto in unison; including thin, flimsy bags which make a high pitched rustle, and thicker, better quality bags that make more of a bassy rustle. This rustling session woke me up and I realised that two new girls had checked into my room.
It transpired that they were actually from Thailand (although their rustling is still technically ‘Japanese Rustling’!) but currently live and work in Sydney. They seemed really sweet, despite their rustling and asked if I was ok – they couldn’t understand the concept of my having a nap in the afternoon! Even though I explained, they still didn’t get it and carried on rustling, so I gave up trying to sleep, got up and got ready to go out.
I made my way to the tram stop and managed to, yet again, negotiate the tram system (with a ticket) to go to Sarah & Tom’s house which was a bit further out of town than my hostel. There, I met their other house mate, Becks and we all had a lovely evening drinking wine, chatting, sitting on a sofa (such a simple thing can be such a pleasure – I really miss sofas!) and watching TV. Fantastic.
Good old "Japanese rustling". A new record of an hour and half was achieved in Queenstown the other day, starting at 6am and included flashing mobiles about the room in the use of torch. However I think they were doing in revenge of being kept up all night listening to people having sex.
ReplyDelete