Melbie?

Australia seems like so long ago already. I've officially been home 2 weeks. crazy. I've been up at camp so it's crazy busy but fabulous. Still good to be home although the missing Sydney has started a wee bit already. Anyways I still have some Australia pics and I really need to get them out befroe I forget I ever spent 5 months of my life there.

And I totally just made Melbie up because I just realized I've never heard anyone shorten it. weird.

But anyways, more of Melbourne. Saturday Amelie and I checked off all the things on her Melbourne to-do list, because I honestly had done zero planning of what I wanted to do and her list seemed pretty good:) So we hit up the Queen Victoria Market, a massive swap-meet style market. Where she almost bought a baby chick (they were only $4!!!!!) and I almost bought this hideous but awesome woven hat/bonnet that folded up flat (I promise it was waaayyy cooler than it sounds). But we both resisted. Then we hit up the Eureka skydeck. It seems pretty standard that big cities have some building insanely tall that you can pay to go look out the top of, Melbourne was no exception. 

View from 88 floors up.

Yarra river.

Out to the coast.

That is the building with the jungle gym on top. remember?

CBD.

You can see the blue tennis courts in the distance where they have the Melbourne Cup. And some stadiums too...

I could have paid extra to go out in that box.....I didn't.

CBD+train station.

Practicing my Vanna White moves.

Feet:) well actually toes mostly...

If I would have been smart I would have taken these in order  but we already know I"m not so they were all completely random. You're welcome:)

Although according to Amelie, the Sydney tower said it had the highest in the southern hemisphere....so someone somewhere is lying.

From the bottom.

Oh you know, just elmo playing the bagpipes.

 Off to the Lindt cafe for hazelnut hot chocolate. imagine melted nutella and foamed milk. ya, basically the best thing ever. I'm drooling a little just remembering it. 
And to finish off the day we headed off to St.Kilda, the most famous, popular, well-known maybe? beach in Melbourne. Which according to lonely-planet had penguins!!!! I'm majorly in love with penguins so we hopped on a tram hoping to get there before it was dark so we could see some! Too bad we got on the tram and didn't know where to get off....so at one point we got off near some water. And we were 99% sure we were at St. Kilda, unfortunately there was no flashing neon sign, or even any sign saying "penguins this way". And it was getting pretty dark, so we pretty much resigned that we were not destined to see any penguins. But we wandered out on this boardwalk anyways....and then.....WE SAW A SIGN FOR PENGUINS. basically it was freakish good luck and maybe magic that we found this place. And we could here the creepy and actually really loud calls of these famed penguins. But it was pretty dark at this point and we couldn't see any. sooo close, but yet sooo far:( until Amelie started chatting up some fellow Germans and I zoned out into I-have-no-idea-what-you're-saying-land, and then they found one!!! So here is a penguin that I was like 3 feet from, in the wild. Yep it was epic!!!

St. Kilda sunset.

PENGUIN!!!

It was adorable....if only it would have fit in my luggage.

The reason my pictures are even worse than usual.

How cute is this??? except it looks like a giant penguin.....definitely not.

Sorry, if you're still reading this and are like "I had to wait a whole week for this non-epic post??". Hate to break it to you but you'll probably have to wait at least another week for another equally un-exciting post:)