Back in Melbourne

Since we last blogged, we ended up spending another three nights in Apollo Bay. We met two people from France (Celine and Romain) who both worked at the hostel and convinced us to stay another night. We hung out with them for the three days and had a blast. Clement and Romain hit it off and went mountain biking every morning up to the top of a small mountain overlooking the town. It took them 50 minutes to climb to the top and ten minutes to get down. We spent the days chilling on the beach, which was a 2 minute walk from the hostel and played many hours of frisbee. The boys were equally as excited to find out that they “finally had a good frisbee partner”…as Romain put it, “Frisbee Sportif”. In the evenings, we hung out on the balcony at the hostel while Celine cooked up a storm. She loves to cook and spoiled us with warm homemade chocolate cupcakes, fresh bread made from scratch, pizza, sushi, vegetable rolls, scones, etc! We were sad to leave Apollo Bay and wish we could have stayed longer.

After leaving Apollo Bay we had one more night before we had to return the rental car in Melbourne. We stayed in small town called Lorne on the Great Ocean Road. We didn’t spend much time here as we had to leave early the next morning to get back to Melbourne. We did have some excitement when a Huntsman spider came for a visit. Clement went to hang his towel on the line and saw him chilling on the wall. He was the size of Clement’s palm. I didn’t go to see it, but the picture he took was all I needed to know that I was not going to get any sleep that night. After doing some googling about this type of spider (I don’t know why I do these things), I found out that they can travel at high speeds and jump around. We always find it funny when the locals talk about all of their deadly creatures. Some of the best we’ve heard include “Everything we have here will kill you” and “Don’t worry about anything but the crocs”. My personal favorite is when they refer to something as “harmless”. For example, the Huntsman spider they refer to as “harmless”. To them, this simply means they won’t kill you. They still have fangs, eat small lizards and are the size of a grown man’s hand, but they are “harmless”?
We made it back to Melbourne and were able to see a lot more of the city. We took the free bus around the whole city, which allowed us to see the important things, as we only had one full day. We enjoyed the city and its many small lanes of cafes, pubs and restaurants. We quickly realized that Melbourne has a lot to offer and can easily see how they have been undergoing a population boom for the past little while. While we were in Apollo Bay, we met a couple about our parent’s age who live in Melbourne. They were very interesting people and ran a law practice out of their home. She also used to be a nurse for many years before going into law. When we told here where we were from in Canada, she knew all about PEI! She loves Anne of GG and hopes to get to the east coast of Canada some day in the near future. They do a lot of travelling, so we hope they do make it to PEI. They were very kind and invited us over for dinner when we arrived back in Melbourne. We took them up on their offer and took the train to their house which was in Williamstown (a small historic suburb of Melbourne). They served us a four course meal and then took us out for gelato and on a driving tour of the city! It was so nice to go into someone’s home and hear about the real Aussie way of life. We will keep in touch with them and hope to see them in Canada.

When we were walking around the city on our way to the train station, we were stopped at a crosswalk. The red man was flashing and usually we bolt across, but we stopped because we were hot as it was really muggy. It’s a good thing we stopped, because sitting at Clem’s feet was a crisp $50 bill!! He quickly picked it up and we high-fived. This was the third time he had found money in Melbourne, as he had previously found a loonie and a toonie in the bathroom at the hostel. Needless to say, we were stoked!