Down Under, baby!

You know how sometimes you get to a place and from the very first moment that you're there you just have a really great feeling about it? Yeah, that's how I felt about Melbourne from the first second I stepped out of the airport. So far, my intuition has been dead on.

Of course, getting here was another matter altogether. Because I added so much time to Sri Lanka, it messed up my flights and resulted in this: 7-hour flight to Perth, 5 hours sitting in the closed and nearly deserted Perth Airport in the middle of the night, 3.5 hour flight to Melbourne. I got a grand total of about 3 hours of spotty sleep over the course of the night so by the time I got to Melbourne I was ti-ired. Not grumpy-tired like I was when I got to Singapore two days before (seriously, what is UP with me getting all these crappy red eye flights lately??) but tired like I could curl up in a ball on a cement floor and sleep tired. But I was SOO excited to be in Australia and to step out into Melbourne that I pressed on.

Got all settled in my hostel (Sarah opted to stay with a Couchsurfer about an hour outside of the city, so I'm staying downtown on my own) and decided to hit the pavement and check out the area I'm in and acclimate myself. Turns out I'm in THE area, right in the center of Melbourne and within walking distance of almost everything I want to see and/or do. Awesome. And as if that isn't awesome enough in and of itself, there is bubble tea everywhere here! I think I might move here.

One day when we were back in India (which now seems like a lifetime ago), we were having lunch and I noticed a woman sitting by herself a couple tables away. Having traveled on my own in the past and knowing what it's like, I felt compelled to ask her to join us. We had a great time talking and comparing India travel stories. Her name was Monique and she lived in Melbourne. She said we should look her up when we got there. A lot of people say things like that so you learn to not take them TOO seriously, but it turns out that she meant it.

Today she picked me up from the hotel and showed me all around her great city! Everything I thought about Melbourne yesterday was confirmed today. Love, love, love it. It's a big city, yet it somehow manages to feel small. It's a metropolis, yet it has lots of green. The people are citydwellers yet come across as friendly and laid back. There is great old architecture mixed with very modern architecture. You cn amble alongside the river that runs through it and almost forget you're in the middle of a big city. It is full of cool restaurants of every possible variety, trendy bars, lots of museums, all different types of neighborhoods, funky shops, high end shops, cool little alleyways lined with all of the above...

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We went for lunch to the Veggie Bar, which Monique described as "very Melbourne", followed by coffee at Mario's, supposedly the best cup of java in the city. This is exactly how the conversation went when we walked in:

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Monique: I'd like a soy chai.
Waitress: We don't have anything soy and we don't do chai.
Then, looking at me: And we don't make anything skinny or decaf either.

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So, basically, don't even ask. It was like "We make coffee. Real coffee, nothing else. Nothing frou frou, nothing frothy, so don't waste my time." I LOVED it.

We checked a few other things out and then met up with Sarah who had come in on the train. We walked along the river, wandered around the trendy little alleys Melbourne is known for, bought some divine chocolates at THE chocolate shop in the city, walked by the Melbourne equivalent of the Christmas windows at Macy's in NYC (SOO weird to do while wearing short sleeves), walked through Chinatown where, of course, we got a bubble tea (I mean, come on, it had been nearly 24 hours since my last one) and ended the day eating delish dumplings at a divey little Chinese restaurant where people line up outside to get in.

It's so great having a local to show you around as they can show you things, the REAL things of a place that you would never find on your own. Once again I find myself really and truly overwhelmed by the willingness of a virtual stranger to give so much of her own time to be kind to someone she barely knows. Even more confirmation that my immediate impressions of Australia being an awesome place were absolutely dead on!