Entries about art

Whew, back in Australia!

First of all, a story on our accommodation in Melbourne....

Picture this: We're sitting in our 12 bed dorm room in our hostel in Auckland and realizing we don't have accommodation in Melbourne. We had looked up some airbnb places but by the time we got around to booking them, they were unavailable. It's 2 days before we fly to Melbourne, so we don't have a lot of times to arrange something. Hostels are really expensive...around $40/night for a dorm room! Unbelievable.
Anyway, we're talking about how we don't have a place to stay and exclaiming 'where are we going to stay in Melbourne?!'
A guy's voice from the other side of the room says "You can sleep in my bed."
We both roll our eyes, 'yeah, right, ok.'
He continues, "no seriously, I'm travelling through New Zealand for the next month, you can stay in my room. I was going to rent it out, but haven't found anyone yet. Just looking for someone to cover my portion of the rent while I'm gone."
We haven't even met this guy and he's offering us his place. Well that's interesting. We're intrigued. We ask some more questions and find out where his place is located, and what his roommates are like. We're assured that they won't mind 2 random girls showing up and staying there for a month. Half an hour later we agree and he tosses us his house key. We had an address and a house key when we arrived in Melbourne. Unbelievable.

We spent almost a month in Melbourne, mostly looking for work and trying to survive the heat. Aside from 1 days work, a trial day, for me, neither of us were successful at finding a job.

The trees were yarn-bombed the first week we were there, which was awesome to be a place that had that happen!

We were in Melbourne for Australia Day, and certainly enjoyed the fireworks.

There was a free concert in Federation Square by the Cat Empire, which was amazing. They're a popular Australian band and they were celebrating there 1,000 show! The crowd all knew the songs, so we felt a little out of place not being able to sing along, but certainly enjoyed the music.

Always on the lookout for books and book exchanges, we were in luck in Melbourne!

This first one is located at Melbourne Central, a central hub of public transportation. There's also lots of stores and coffee shops. And this. A free book exchange, based on the honor system.

Another time, we were carrying around a ton of books that we were done reading, hoping to sell them back to a used bookstore. We were turned down though, they already had too may books at the moment and it would be another month before they would accept any new books. Walking along, backs sore from the amount of books we were carrying, we stumbled upon this place. A cafe with a bookshelf. We gladly donated our books and got free cappuccinos out of it!

Pictures of the city...

Melbourne is known for its street art, and no pictures can really portray it. Though I certainly tried with these below. You never know when you turn a corner whether you might find something cool.

Elizabeth and I waited for the second to last day to see the sculptures by the sea. It was also the second hottest day we'd been here. And a Saturday. It was packed with people. I'd actually read about the Sculptures by the Sea walk in a blog months ago, but didn't remember the dates, so I'm glad we timed it right!

We took a couple buses to get to Bondi Beach where it all starts, and headed South to Coogee Beach. Not sure I'll ever like buses, but we eventually made it. It was the first time we'd been to Bondi and it's a touristy beach town from what we could tell from the half an hour we were there. We got some last minute supplies we'd been needing...sunglasses for me and a hat for Elizabeth...and headed out on the walk.

It's advertised as 6km but definitely felt a lot longer. Probably partly because we were surrounded by so many people we couldn't walk normally. We only lost each other once in the crowd but there was a ton of people everywhere. You can't tell from most of my pictures since I was trying to avoid capturing the mobs of people and focusing on the sculptures and picturesque landscape.

In the end it was hot (mid 80s), long, and totally worth it. The path goes up and down stairs so you go from being along a beach/water level to being up on a cliff overlooking the ocean and the next beach as it follows the shoreline south to Coogee. I took way too many pictures and will now just post a lot of them.

One of my favorites for sure...a simple glass ball with water in it.

You know you're in Australia when there's giant jugs of free sunscreen: