Living it up in St Kilda
Trip Start
Feb 04, 2008
1
20
46
Trip End
May 28, 2008
Melbourne,
Australia
Friday, March 7, 2008
After some sound advice from Katie we decided to stay in St Kilda rather than getting a hostel in Melbourne city centre. St Kilda is uber cool and we loved it straight away. There's a gorgeous beach and roads full of the trendiest bars and cafes (and people!). We spent the first day exploring and catching up on lost sleep, not to mention getting very excited about seeing Kieran the next day!
8th March 2008
The first mission of the day was to work out how the tram system worked to get us into the city centre. Once we got there we spent the day exploring different sections of the city, including chinatown and the best market we've ever seen! The whole place has got a really great vibe and awesome graffiti in all the alleyways.
We arranged to meet Kieran at his hostel and after looking it up in our guidebook we were confident that we knew how to get there.....however after waiting at the bar in some really rundown hostel in South Melbourne with sign of Kieran we started to suspect that we were in the wrong place! Our suspicions were confirmed when the barmaid said there was another hostel of the same name in the city centre so after a quick phonecall to Kieran we were back on the tram! Eventually we got to see him for the first time in 8 months and a night of drunken fun ensued!
9th March 2008
Kieran had already booked a flight to Brisbane for the 10th March so we needed to make the most of his time in Melbourne and he arranged to come to St Kilda for the day.
9
Round two of drinking and catching up on all of our adventures so far. We also got to meet 2 of Kierans friends and had a really good time in the bars of St Kilda.10th March 2008
Today will always be known as "The day we made friends with Dr K" - after hearing about the legendary nights andy and Hinch had when they met the doc we knew we had to sign ourselves up for Neighbours Night at The Elephant and Wheelbarrow in St Kilda. The best $36 you can ever spend (it's even billed as the best night you can have in Australia - and they're not wrong!). Really early on in the evening we made friends with another group of backpackers (one of whom was the biggest neighbours fan you could ever meet!) which made the night even more fun. Not only do the "stars" come round to every table for photos and chat we had the added pleasure of being entertained by Dr K's band "Waiting Room" at the end of the night. It was a really surreal experience meeting the stars and the best thing Sam came up with to say to Dr K was "I didn't expect to see you in trainers" but apprently he's "a casual kind of a guy". We really enjoyed rocking out to his band, especially as they did covers of recent English bands and a few classics!
11th/12th March 2008
After being extremely hungover and staying in a 10-bed dorm we decided to book our last 2 nights in St Kilda at The Oslo "Hotel". Prices weren't too bad and it looked pretty decent from the outside but after checking in we were taken to "B Block" which was more like prisoner cell block B. It's the worst and dirtiest hostel we've stayed in so far with the grimiest rank kitchen, a broken bunk bed (they'd just removed the top bunk and left a climbing frame around the bottom bed!) and a carpet which definately hadn't been hoovered in years! Lovely!
Comments
Neighbours!!
Nearly as good as your neighbours back home do you think!!!!