At first glance, Melbourne kind of reminds me of San Francisco..

Where did I leave off..? Yes, I was sadly leaving Noosa on a Friday morning to head to Melbourne.. took the bus from Noosa to the Brisbane Airport which took about an hour and a half.. flight from Brisbane to Melbourne was just short of 2 hours.. arrived in Melbourne and the day was almost gone but nonetheless, I strolled around the neighborhood, South Yarra, I was staying in after checking into my guesthouse.. charming little guest house and a good value.. would have been better if the showers had pressure and not a light mist :-(. Well, Melbourne adventure begins!

Woke up the next morning after sleeping in and headed down to the CBD (central kind of like downtown if you will)... walked and walked.. took in all the sights and restraunts, train stations, train buildings, Christmas windows, just took in the city! Food galore everywhere! What stood out at me was "Lord of the Fries" which is exactly what it sounds like and a place called "Little Cupcakes" .. I can get used to having afternoon tea time.. it's almost like my afternoonm Starbucks breaks at work! Speaking of which, Melbourne has 7Elevens like we have Starbucks! Wonderng where Woolworth is? It's in Australia!

Melbourne.. sort of like San Francisco in many ways..

Second half of the afternoon, I took the bus out to Brighton Beach, home of the little colorful cottages which did not disappoint!There were about 70 or so distinctly colorful beach cottages.. all sitting pretty by the beachside.. and even a wedding going on at the end of it.. which sort of ruined my photo opportunity but at least they didn't take up the entire beach! That would be tragic for my camera!!

Next day.. explored another suburb neighborhood, St. Kilda, markets, Luna park, restraunts, more city culture of Melbourne. AND then I needed a little down time with all the city atmophere so I popped into the cinema and watched...... wait for it... wait for it... "New Moon"! I never read the books and I never understood the hype but after catching "Twilight" during the flight out from SFO, I had to catch the next one! LOVED it! Not sure if all Aussie theatres work this way but the movie I caught was scheduled for 3:15pm.. I walked at 3:35pm because the woman said I had 5 minutes.. but it didn't actually start until 3:50 or so.. so btwn 3:15 and 3:50.. it was all previews and commercials.. it ended up being about a 3 hr movie sitting which was fine by me but strange! By the way, did I mention that flies in Oz.. they bite and I got attacked! Mean little suckers!!

The next day, I took on the Great Ocean Road to see... what else? The 12 Apostles! The Great Ocean Road is a lot like Highway 1 back home.. drive along the coast.. beach.. beach towns.. greenery.. it's nice! At first glance, Melbourne reminds me a lot of San Francisco! The weather, the restaurants, the downtown, the little suburb neighborhoods, the parks, the museums (the Ian Potter Museum is a great one!), the diversity of personalities and individuals but then when you take a closer look, it's similar in many ways but not as much as I had thought. I won't go into the details of it but I can say one thing, folks from Melbourne are quite competitive with comparisons that of Sydney! They want more people living down (down 500k vs Sydney), they purposefuly build a bigger, taller bridge and they're very vocal about comparisons as much. The three Melbourne natives that I did meet did not waste anytime in down talking Sydney which was all very funny to me.

I decided that 2 full days of city touring Melbourne and 1 day of the Great Ocean Road was enough of Victoria for me. Luckily, I was able to move my Virgin Bluepass Flight up a day, got a refund for one night at the guesthouse I was staying in and made a last minute reservation for the extra night in Sydney... Off to Sydney I go!