Woke up around 8:15AM (I slept well in the middle of the other two---the mattress was a bit springy but we were all exhausted so were all out quickly), repacked my backpack, and headed to the free pancake breakfast in the hostel. MMMmm they were huge chocolate chip pancakes--I ate four and was completely stuffed until after noon! They were delicious! We checked out at 10 and headed toward the city. We started walking through Albert Park--which turned out to be the park where the Grand Prix was just held. We got to walk almost the entire course since it happened last week and were just disassembling it. We ended up talking to a construction worker who seemed a little lonely because he talked to us for over 15 minutes. He gave us tons of city suggestions, but talked our ears off.
We finally made it out of the park after about 45 minutes of walking and headed toward St. Kilda (main strip to get to the city) and jumped on a free tram which took us to Flinders Street--main town area just over Yarra River. The first thing we walked past was St. Paul's Cathedral. It was gigantic and beautiful! Such a brilliant church--beautiful mosaics, stained glass, and altar.
Then we went down Swanston street where we found hundreds of souvenir shops, take-away restaurants, tons of Sushi places, and Chinatown. We walked all the way across town to the Victoria Market. The market is filled with tons of shoe shops--a ton of uggs, clothing, fruits and veggies, toys, and souvenirs. We walked around the market for hours! There was a food court which we ate in for lunch--however I had Abby's leftover chicken and sundried tomato wrap and a piece of her fish--very fresh and hot mmm delicious! We relaxed for a little bit, took our backpacks off for awhile, but then it was right back to shopping. All the tents were right next to one another so we just kept going and going and going. All the items were similar to what the next person was selling---we just had to bargain for the best deal we could!
After the market, we boarded the free tram and took a short tour of the other end of the city. We got off at the Parliament House which is home of the Victoria Parliament. We continued on and found St. Patrick's Cathedral--another beautiful church. This one is "one of the grandest Gothic revival churches in AUS". It was really late already so we couldn't go inside. We kept walking and headed into Fitzroy Gardens (beautiful and open grassy area). The Garden was full of walkways, plants, trees and lead us to the Treasury Gardens ("small and peaceful greenspace"). This garden was featured around two small ponds and had a memorial for JFK in it. This memorial consisted of a rock with President JFK's face on it. We found this rather odd of a memorial--just not much to it. As were exiting the gardens, we came across two couples rolling around on each in the grass---appearing very affectionate which made me crack up. The couples were on top of one another--too much PDA to be honest.
We hopped back on the free shuttle back to the main drag where we came across the Melbourne Centre---a huge indoor mall with 5 floors of stores and restaurants. We were all pretty hungry by this point, and headed to the food court. I ended up getting 2 sushi rolls---chicken teriyaki and a California roll and I got one Unagi sushimi roll--my favorite!!! Mmmm delicous! There were about 10 other restaurants to chose from---pizza, pasta, burgers, sandwiches.
After dinner, it was time to head to the Skybus and get to the airport. It cost AUS$16, but only 25 minutes to get back to the airport. We found TigerAirways terminal which they have of their own (kind of weird--it was only for Tiger and a very small terminal--only 4 gates in total). Security went super quick again and found a ton of people waiting for our plane once I arrived at the gate. Our plane would get delayed a half hour, but we didn't have anywhere to go anyway so we just hung out for longer. To board the plane, we had to walk completely outside---rather breezy and cold tonight and walk all the way down to the plane--We walked entirely outside to board the back of the plane. The plane was jammed--completely full which shocked me for it being a 10PM-12:30AM flight. The flight went really well---I slept the entire way, arriving at Cairns at about 1AM. The weather was so much warmer in Cairns---felt the muggy, humid air once I stepped off the plane, but I didn't mind--I missed the warmed weather after being in cold Melbourne! When we arrived in the airport we just moved to the arrival area because the terminal area was closing and camped out on some couches. We took out out towels and blanket and head to bed. I was exhausted and fell right to sleep! Interesting spending a couple nights in an airport--never thought I would be doing such a thing----but hey its free and conveniently located for fliers! The couch was pretty comfy so I was very happy to have a place to lay my head down.
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