In other news, I’ve had a very eventful two weeks and even had a companion: Katy came to visit! Katy, for those of you who read this but don’t really pay attention anything I say, was my freshman year roommate at Mizzou (that's us making monkey faces at the zoo. And she graduated this month! She left Sydney on Monday but the week and a half she was here was full-on. I was actually kinda glad to see her go because I was so tired. But even if she is living in my apartment for the next few months, seeing as I’m alive and well and not dead, it’s not like I’m haunting it so I won’t see her for a while. It was really good to see her.But, speaking of haunting, we took a Ghost Tour of the Rocks, which was one of the first areas of settlement in Sydney and was a slum through
the 1920s. It was really interesting. A little creepy, but very fun. Our tour guide wore a long black overcoat and bowler hat, and had a definite flair for the dramatic. He was good at telling some awfully gruesome ghost stories. Like the story of Mrs. Greenway, who after being discovered in bed with a sailor with her husband, was strangled by him. Only the screams that children hear aren’t exactly said to be her dying screams. Or the cabin boy who was the first person to be hanged in Sydney, at Observatory Hill. Or my personal favorite, the ghosts of those shanghaied from the Watson Bay Hotel. It’s actually where the term shanghaied came from, because people shanghaied from the Watson Bay Hotel often ended up in Shanghai. And I walked the whole way, which was two hours, so I was very pleased with myself!We also went to a show at the Opera House, which I’ve been waiting to do for years. We were bummed there wasn’t an actual opera on; apparently May is a traditional break in the opera season. We saw Ting Tong, a Walk With the Goons, which was about the madness of Terry Milligan, creator of the Goon Show on the BBC in England and a Monty Python writer. The Opera House made us buy the playbill (cheap bastards, considering how much I paid for the tickets!),
but the show was quite entertaining. And it was a thrill just to be in the Opera House, although I suppose that it’s the thrill of being a tourist as well. We had coffee at the Opera Bar afterward, because Katy was still jet lagged, but it was a great night. Except for the fact that the zipper of my dress ripped open at intermission, and I couldn’t fix it until after the show. Of course that happens when I’m trying to be classy at the Opera House.We also went to the zoo and saw the marsupials and Asian elephants (I am, as you can see, shorter than a baby giraffe), and we went to the Barracks Museum, which had lots of nifty things from all the convicts. We had a long walk around the Domain and the Royal Botanical Gardens. And it was warm and sunny all day. Which was really really lucky because it rained every day for a week before Katy arrived. We went bar hopping at the Rocks and at Darling Harbour. And Katy spent a lot of time running around being a tourist while I was at my internship and uni classes.
But the topper was Melbourne.
I have been wanting to go to Melbourne since the last time I was here four years ago and was obsessed with The Secret Life of Us (an Aussie television show set in Melbourne that I could gush about at length but is now, alas, canceled). We, inadvertently, booked flights to and from the wrong Melbourne airport. For future reference, do NOT fly into Avalon airport if you’re ever in the pleasurable situation of being in Melbourne. It’s in the boonies about an hour drive from the city. Fly into Tullamarie Airport! We were on the airplane, and saw the city and got excited.... and then flew over it.Katy’s dad has a friend and colleague who lives in Melbourne, and he and his wife were really super to us. Alan picked us up from the airport in the boonies (and drove us back), and helped us get acquainted with the city and took us to Philip Island to see the penguins. And I didn’t even know Australia had penguins. About 900 of them came to their nests at sunset on Philip Island- and it’s quite a nice set up. There’s bleachers on the beach so you can watch them come out of the water, and then you can watch them wander to their nests as yo
u walk back to your car. These particular penguins are the smallest variety in the world, and are about a foot tall. We think the stuffed penguin Katy bought for her sister is bigger than the actual ones we saw (JakeMonster is getting a t-shirt).Melbourne the city is really great. It’s nightlife is a little intense. Me and Katy were feeling not-hardcore enough (about music) to truly go into the clubs. Maybe we weren’t wearing enough black or have enough visible piercings. But we did find a bar with very cute bartenders and excellent and expensive cocktails called Ginger on Brunswick St.
We stayed at a backpackers called The Nunnery in Fitzroy, which was actually once a nunnery. We chose it only so we could holler at each other “Get thee to a nunnery!” every time we were headed back to the hotel. We even got upgraded to a room with two single beds instead of bunk beds because they stuffed up our reservation (or we made the incorrect one, whatever). But it was very charming, they’ve done a good job of preserving the feeling of the place. Homey, but not to Catholic and scary.
And the shopping in Melbourne is definitely nice. There’s lots of very pretty boutiques that we could not afford- we had the most luck at Myer (which is like Dillards but Australian). I bought a coat as my major purchase. The Arcades are really fun, and I got an amazing hot chocolate in a shop at one. And there are TRAMS! It’s the most amazingly interesting form of pubic transportation- and one of the oldest tram systems in the world. The trams were really cool.What, I dig the trams.
While I wish we could’ve had more time in Melbourne, some things can’t be helped. I can always go back. I think it’ll be the next Australian city I live in. Haha.
Katy, if I’m forgetting anything, let me know!
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