Living the Melbourne Life

Hey Everybody, sorry it's been so long between posts (again!). We've spent most of the last couple of months working. Mat's been doing weeks of up to 40 hours at the same café he was working at when we last wrote (although now the Australian summer holiday has ended it's more like a 30 hour week - plus he saw a lot of big name Australian cricket players like Ricky Ponting and Michael Clarke when they held a promotional event at the café). Leah finished working at Hart & Heim just after Christmas and has since found employment at a nearby café called Jelly Bean - working Monday to Friday 9 - 3. All this work has meant that we really haven't done all that much (we don't have days off together so anything that can't be done in an afternoon has been out of the question) but we have managed to recuperate all of the savings we brought over here with us which means that we should be able to do more when we move on from Melbourne.

Our Valentine's pizza - you by it by
length rather than  diameter

However, that's not to say that we've been doing nothing. We've experienced a bit more of the local food and drink - trying Australian beers and ciders (Beezneez wheat beer and 5 seeds cloudy cider were among particular favourites) as well as sampling the nearest fish and chip shop. We used the excuse that we hadn't eaten out since we were in Singapore (ironically where we had terrible fish and chips) to justify enjoying a sharing platter of the catch of the day (battered of course), chips, potato cakes, salt and pepper calamari, dim sims, salad and tartare! We highly recommend the Tank Fish and Chippery, Lygon Street, if ever you're in the neighbourhood.

Hello Possums!!

We also sampled takeaway from the nearest pizzeria (we are in the Italian district so we are spoilt for choice). It was our valentine's treat (along with the home-made truffles and a bottle of wine) and we took them to the nearby Carlton Gardens for an al-fresco dinner - watching possums and massive bats, how romantic!

We experienced the hustle and bustle of the Victoria Night Market - enjoying watching live music with an ice-cold sangria, we're going back this week for food too as it only runs until the end of February. We also got to see live music at a free festival in the St. Kilda region of Melbourne. The whole thing was based around the seafront and the main stage was on the beach itself. It was really nice to do something different and there was a great, relaxed vibe.

We also went to the cinema as they offer discounted tickets on Mondays and after seeing all the OSCAR hype around Hugo we decided to watch it for ourselves. We both really enjoyed the film (despite ending up with salted popcorn), it seemed to be in its element on the big-screen and made the most of being in 3D.

St. Kilda Festival main stage

We've done some sightseeing too; last week we visited the 88^th floor of the Eureka Sky Tower which is Melbourne's tallest building - we went at sunset and there's not much to say except check out the pictures below.

Finally, we've got news... we've booked tickets to leave Melbourne and fly to Sydney! We're travelling on Easter weekend so that leaves us about 5 weeks more work and then about a week to finish seeing the sights of Melbourne! It'll be like a mini holiday because if all goes to plan then we will spend about 2 weeks in Sydney before we travel on up the coast. We'll probably go to Brisbane and then try and get some more work for 6-8 weeks before completing the journey up to Cairns and the Barrier reef. We'll let you know more when we do and we promise to write more frequently - we have a lot of things to see before leaving Melbourne.

Lots of love

Leah and Mat