Melbourne and Great Ocean Road

The journey to Melbourne from Kolkata was a very long one - Kolkata to Delhi, then Delhi to Sydney, then finally Sydney to Melbourne = about 25 hours in all! We were very relieved to be picked up by Andy's cousin Brendan and his gorgeous little girl Elcie who welcomed us to Australia. We'd been told that on arriving to Australia our ears would ring with the quietness compared to India - it was actually true! The silence was deafening for a little while! It also took us some time to get used to wearing seat belts in the car again as they were actually going fast enough to be worth it/ were available!

We had a day recovering and Brendan showed us around the Dandenongs, a beautiful area with lots of greenery and ferns and an old school tourist train that happened to go by as we were there. 

We also went shopping for a Christmas tree - a surreal experience in blazing sunshine!

The next day we hit the Great Ocean Road for a couple of days. We had thought 3 days would be plenty of time to see everything - how wrong we were! The coastline was absolutely stunning and different in every place we stopped. 

We visited Erskine Falls which was essentially a tropical rainforest right next to the coast! 

We also popped into Anglesea Golf Course and happened to see a few kangaroos bouncing around - not bad for our 2nd day in Australia!

We had one fantastic day at Cape Otway where we went zip wiring through the trees! It felt as though we were flying through the home of dinosaurs with all of the ferns around.

We also stopped by the Twelve Apostles which looked just like the pictures, however due to vast numbers of tourists we left pretty sharpish!

On our way back to Melbourne we stopped at Tower Hill which is a lake in a dormant volcano teeming with wildlife around it. We spotted an emu, a few rabbits and a cat randomly. 

We returned to Melbourne for an action-packed weekend and loved every minute of it! Friday night saw us chilling out with the richest hot chocolate and chocolate fondue in St Kilda. We asked for hot chocolate and were instantly asked about which kind of chocolate we wanted, if we wanted a Spanish twist, if we wanted vanilla added, any cream - Andy and I must have both had blank faces when we replied that we just wanted a 'normal' hot chocolate!

Saturday morning we had breaky with our friend we met in Kolkata, Aveen, who showed us how to breakfast Melbourne style on the Yarra River. We had a wander round the city for the rest of the day, checking out the street art on Hosier Lane, watching the various performers around Federation Square, wandered along the Yarra River and ate more than we cared to think about! The day was nicely rounded off by a visit to an Italian bakery which was like a winter wonderland and had the most delicious cheesecake!

Sunday included a trip to T'Gallant winery for lunch and a spot of wine tasting. After ordering the world's largest pizzas (accidentally!) we had great fun pretending we knew what we were talking about with the wine!

We rounded off our trip with a bit of local culture and attended a football (soccer here) game Melbourne vs Brisbane. We had great fun, especially given neither of us had ever been to a footy match before!