Hello everyone! Guess what: I'm not dead!

Yeah, so it turns out that St. Kilda, where my Melbourne hostel was, is a pretty happening locale. Which translates into Ali goes out drinking and seeing live music every night of the week. Literally for two weeks straight, I think I saw at least one band per night. It was fantastic, and other than the weather, Melbourne is by far my favourite Australian city. Also, Kim, please note I went to Pearl on Tuesday morning, but apparently there is no breakfast menu on weekdays (what's up with that?!), so no french toast for me.

But sadly, all good things must come to an end. So yesterday I left the city in a tiny car (Toyota Yaris) with three other people (two German girls and an American guy) and all our stuff and we headed southwest. We spent last night in Port Campbell (only redeeming feature being that its close to the Twelve Apostles. The only pub in town charged $6.60 for a pint: highway robbery!!), and today made it to the Grampian Mountains. Which means we've pretty much completed the Great Ocean Road (spectacular!), as we head towards Adelaide. Tomorrow we're gonna try and find a hiking trail that leads to swiming, and then onto Adelaide Saturday, followed by Kangaroo Island (once considered the most lawless place in the British Empire).

We'll get back to Melbourne on Wednesday, and then early Thursday morning I'll be headed to Tasmania, which should be fun. I'm doing a six day tour, and then we'll see what happens. Apparently its cold, but its also really cheap, which is appealing.

Okay, that's enough parentheses for everyone, isn't it?

So the fam left today, leaving me rather bereft. We had a great almost three week visit, but now the fun has ended.

Our climb of the Harbour Bridge in Sydney was succesful, in that we did not fall off. Sadly, the weather was rather uncooperative though, and we got soaked to the skin from horizontal rain. Which meant the pictures didn't turn out so good. It was highway robbery style expensive, but I'd still highly recommend it, and am thouroughly glad we did it. The views were incredible.

In Melbourne we stayed in a very nice apartment style hotel on the South bank of the river Yarra, which runs through the middle of things. Mum and I managed to get to the Melbourne Museum (so much better than the Australia Museum in Sydney!), and the National Gallery of Victoria, where we saw an awesome millinery exhibit.

All four of us went to the Immigration museum, where we crafted it up, and later to the Aquarium, where we saw a sting ray giving birth! We also spent a day at the zoo, sweating, and looking at very hot animals. Except the platypus, who was in a very nice cool exhibit. Hoohah for the platypus!

We also spent a day checking out the Sunday markets at St. Kilda, of course, we shopped.

Today after mum and the girls left for the airport, I headed to my hostel, which is in St. Kilda, and spent most of the morning loafing around reading my book at a cafe. I went to the NGV again this afternoon, because we didn't nearly finish it last week.

Not sure what my plans are for now, though I do plan on being in Melbourne for at least another week. I'm vaguely thinking about looking for a job, but I do hate job searching. I'll let you know when I figure it out.