Melbourne and Sydney

"So which city did you like more, Sydney or Melbourne?" Like in many other countries, Australia has two large cities with two completely different characters. Everyone has a very solid opinion regarding this question. Oren kept his opinion from his previous visit in Australia. He prefers Sydney. I, on the other hand, prefer Melbourne. Sydney was a bit too shiny and tidy for me, which is understandable when taking into account where I am coming from. As soon as the working hours are over, the center is abandoned and all the life moves to other neighborhoods. Melbourne, with its dark, full of graffiti alleys and small coffee shops, gives a more real feeling. The gray weather fits its gloomy atmosphere. Something between London and New York.         
We got to Melbourne the day before we had to return the car, and it welcomed us with gray skies and rain. We decided that we don't want to sleep in a tent any longer, so we found a pretty basic cabin in one of the caravan parks.

In the next morning we successfully returned the car, which was a great relief. We drove about 18,000km on a car that already had around 350,000 behind it, and there were no significant problems with it. All the minor problems were fixed on the way, free of charge. After returning the car we found that they had a free internet access for their clients. We spent few hours there until the hunger for internet was replaced by a regular hunger. We found a small Chinese place and had a very tasty roasted duck there. We decided that a duck is the lamb of the birds.

Later we found our hostel, which was located right in the center on the CBD (Central Business District – the pumping heart of every city). While wandering around the city we entered the China town area and there we found a cheap internet café. We stayed there few hours, until it was dark outside. This blog does take a lot of time to maintain…

In our hostel we met Asaf and Bareket, an extremely nice Israeli couple who were also finishing their trip around Australia and flying to Auckland on the same date as we did. It seemed that had the opposite luck than us. They were traveling on the same route in Australia in the same season as us, but not like us, they got all the bad weather.

Even though it didn't greet us with a good weather when we arrived, Melbourne tried its best and arranged one relatively sunny day in the middle of all the grayness, just for us. We heard that the Botanical Gardens are worth visiting, so after a month in the outback, when we finally reached a big city, we found ourselves looking for the nature once again. The gardens were nice but not amazing.



Walking along the large river in the middle of Melbourne and watching all the different people was really pleasant. At one point we saw a large group (about 100 people) of teenagers preparing to some sort of a group dance. It was the most inhomogeneous group we ever saw. There were Asians, Africans, Europeans… kids of all types, colors and sizes. And the fascinating thing was that whenever they gathered in groups, those groups were mixed as well. It was very inspiring to watch…

The best thing to do when you are in Melbourne is just to walk it. Melbourne is full of small and big surprises that you will not find in any guide book, spread all around the city. Everyone can find something interesting there. While wandering, we stumbled over a sign that offered a haircut for 15$. The catch was the fact that the hairdresser is a student in hairdressing college. Since I like adventures and it was time to get a haircut and since Oren wanted to visit lots of electronics stores that didn't interest me, I jumped on the opportunity. The experience was quite amusing. I've put the life of my hair in the shaking hands of a skinny Chinese girl. From the way she treated my hair, it looked like I was the third person who ever let her cut his hair, after her mother and sister. Fortunately for me, all was done under the strict supervision of her instructor, and at some point she even took over and finished the job. So at the end, no damage was done.
We've also visited the large market that reminded us the markets in London. We bought there some seafood and later treated ourselves with a nice dinner that impressed the other guests in our hostel. Even though we are backpackers, we try to prepare nice meals and not to eat instant MSG (mono-sodium glutamate) meals all the time, like the others do.

On our last half a day we visited a show in an exhibition center in the main square of Melbourne. It was a fascinating show about media, with lots of things to play with. Later we took a free tourists bus and had an nice dinner in an Italian neighborhood.      

After three days in Melbourne (not enough) we had to return to Sydney. The bus from Melbourne to Sydney was a 13 hours bus and cost just a bit less than a flight. Since we didn't want to waste time on the bus ride, we took the flight. We arrived in Sydney at night and got to the hostel we've booked in advance. This was truly one of the worst hostels we've ever been in, including South America. It gave you the feeling as if you are facing a teacher that lost all control and patience towards his students and now he is yelling at all of them no matter if they are good or bad. There were many signs on the walls shouting at you: "Don't steal!", "Don't leave a mess", "Wash your dishes!", "We know who you are!", "Next time we will call the police!". All we wanted was a place to sleep… We were placed in a dorm room with a guy who obviously wasn't happy with our presence. When we said "hello" he just growled. In addition to all this, some of the beds had nasty bed-bugs in them. Experience was the only way to find out which beds had them. Since we were too lazy to move all our packs to another hostel, we stayed there 3 not very pleasant nights.

The nice thing in going back to a city you have already visited is that you don't have to go to all the touristic sites you must see on your first visit. You can relax and really enjoy the city. But we are not people who know how to relax, and since we got used to be searching for wildlife we continued to do so in Sydney. This time we were searching for koalas and kangaroos - stuffed koalas and Kangaroo steaks. Sounds simple, but it's not. I was so impressed by the cute koalas, that I wanted to take a small copy with me back home. But no matter how much we looked, we couldn't find anything that was half as cute as a real koala. We also wanted to taste a kangaroo steak. There are over 70 millions of kangaroos hopping around Australia and apparently it is easier to catch one yourself than to find one in a restaurant in Sydney. We looked in several neighborhoods, in dozens of restaurants and after few hours we found one restaurant that serve kangaroos. We took a subway and walked for 10 minutes only to find out that it was closed on Sundays. We decided to come back on the next day for lunch. We got there, hungry, at 3pm but the waitress told us that they won't open the kitchen until 6pm. When we came back at 9pm the kitchen was already closed, since there weren't enough customers. We had to leave Australia without tasting the national symbol.

During our wandering we got to an area we missed in our previous visit, Cockle Bay. A beautiful piece of a harbour full of restaurants and tourist attractions. Few ships were docked along the pier. One of them looked very old. When we got closer we saw it was a replica of the Endeavour, the ship that Captain Cook used on his journey when he discovered Australia. The replica has a history of itself, since it followed the real Endevour's steps for the last few years. It was standing there for a reason. They were recruiting for its next journey around Australia. This journey includes lots of hard work in the old fashion way, but no previous experience is required. We thought it was the coolest experience one can have and went to find out what is required in order to join the crew. Apparently, it required a lot of money… Each week cost about 3,000 dollars. So if we will win the lottery real soon, we already know what to do with part of the money.

Other than wandering around the city, we had few social visits to do in Sydney. First we visited Esti, who in the meanwhile doubled the amount of her children by giving birth to the lovely Zoe.

On our last day in Sydney we met with Oliver, the lad we met in Magnetic Island. If you ever thought your life is interesting, you should spend half an hour with Oliver in order to understand how plain and boring your life really is. We met him for a Happy Hour in a bar close to his house, where we had couple of beers and met few of his friends and neighbors. His fascinating and unbelievable stories stayed exactly the same. Later when we got to his house we saw all the amazing archive he always mentioned. There were hundreds of diaries, describing all his travels around the world. There were packs of thousands organized cards. Each card was dedicated to a person that he met on his way, name, the place they met and few important details. A blue card for guys, orange for girls, pink for girls he was romantically involved with. There were a lot of pink cards there… We don't know what was more impressive, the amount of pink cards or the fact that he remembered all the details. The small apartment was full of records of his fascinating life. He treated us with homemade Lasagna and a salad and yelled at me when I prepared the dressing not the way he intended, a French cook after all...
The country he loved the most was Finland. He have visited it numerous times. "Finland is beautiful, you would love it there... Would you like to see the pictures?" he asked. "Of course we would". He brought an album full of black and white pictures. There was only one picture of a landscape, all the rest were photos of girls he met. Each picture had a story behind it.
We spent few hours drinking wine and listening to his fascinating stories. 
         

Picture Album Galleries

Melbourne

Sydney

 Tip 1: Melbourne. When you are hungry go to China town, lots of Asians restaurants with large and delicious dishes for ridiculous prices.

Tip 2: For internet you can either go to the main library, where it's free, or find some cheap internet café in China town.

Tip 3: In Melbourne there is a tourist's bus that circles the CBD and takes you to all the touristic highlights of the city, free of charge.

Tip 4: Travelers Autobarn is a great place for renting a car for a long period. They have branches in all Australian major cities. They provide a very good service for really low prices, especially when you book through an agency. We paid 29 Australian dollars for an aged Ford Falcon. The disadvantage is that it drinks a lot of fuel, but most of the cars you will rent will do that.