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:)

G.O.R.

So I've never ever seen the Great Ocean Road abbreviated to G.O.R., but I'm gonna start it and then everyone will be talking about their awesome time on GOR(or maybe I'm just explaining so I don't have to write it out for the rest of this post, lazy. I know).....

Also this post may or may not be novel-length because of 5,000 pictures. I edited out at least half, I promise. But there were just sooo many good ones!

Anyways, made up abbreviations and length aside, Friday morning I once again awoke bright and early for an all-day, epic GOR tour. After an epic blonde moment where I didn't get on the bus because in my head I thought I had booked with another company, the day went fantasmicly. Seriously, so good. We headed out of the city for a while, then stopped for a few pics at Bells Beach. A super famous beach where they have some serious surf competitions. And apparently the wind was crap for surfing that day otherwise there would have been heaps of surfers, even though it was freaking cold. Hence the nearby town was where modern wetsuits were invented. I don't care how fabulous your wetsuit is, that water still would have been ridiculously cold.

Bell's Beach

Just a wee bit windy.....

Round 2.

Doesn't this make you just want to hop right in??

Stairs that I was too lazy to actually go down...

Um. So it looks like I"m just randomly squatting on the side of the road. I promise that arch in the background says Great Ocean Road.....soooo it's slightly less random:)

I feel like if you have to read the signs to tell you which side to drive on....you shouldn't be driving.

Where we stopped for morning tea. 

Cool bird. part 1/500....

More cool birds.... if I actually liked birds this would have been wayyyy cooler.

On the side of the road....ya I'd say the views weren't too bad...

lovely.

And then it came time to face my fears.....I was only mildly successful.

Watching other people feed birds/get attacked by them. Amelie is on the left. She was a really sweet German girl I met at my hostel and we hung out/ were each others photographers all day long:)

My turn!!!

As you can tell by face, I'm totally loving this....not.

Amelie kept telling me to smile....

This is as close to a smile as I got.

They freakishly loved Amelie's hair.

Feet+birds.....I know, I'm so brave:)

AWWWWW!!!!!! A part of nature more my style.

Koalas in the wild.....so cool.

This was supposed to be my head and a koala....instead its just awkwardly my head. you're welcome.

SO CUTE!!!!!

Crazy birds....

Super helpful road sign......

Some ocean on the G.O.R. whaaaa????

Hiking through some Victorian rainforest. (Melbourne/G.O.R. is in the state of Victoria....)

More rainforest.

Awesome tree....and then I was told I wasn't allowed to squat in the tree because it was awkward...

And then I just didn't know what to do.

epic treesome. Three trees that have merged. trust me it was cooler in real life.

my feets in the rainforest.

Blue skies, perfect for.....A HELICOPTER RIDE!!!!!

waiting....

Amelie and I before our ride.

Headset and everything. It was sooo legit.

Take off.

Headed out over the water.

So the helicopter ride was a last minute "what the heck you're only in Australia for 1 more week splurge". Amelie and I got to ride in one out over the water to get an areial view of the 12 apostles. Or rather the 8 that are still standing (rock formations out in the water that are made of sandstone? or some other rock that looks pretty however is pretty soft and no match for the waves....hence the only 8/12 left.)

First glimpse of an apostle.

Apostles.

AWESOME!!!!

Amelie and I.

Headed back.

A loooonnnnngggg ways down.

Coastline.

Can you find all 8?

Don't mind me squatting again, or my awesome life jacket strapped oh so inconspicuously.....

The guy just laughed at me the whole time while I posed for these pictures, but honestly
how boring is it to just stand there normally!!!!!

Twelve apostles: the ground edition.

That's the fourth one crumbled in the front....

Me and some apostles.

Lord Arch Gorge.....maybe.

If you scroll through the next three really fast it looks like one jump....however it was in actuality 3 attempts....

awesome sun....and then it started pouring.

But with the rain.....

Comes a rainbow.

The awkward photo a guy from Florida insisted on taking.

The razorback? the ridge? I forgot the name, but some skinny, awesome rock:)

Seriously are you tired of looking at me yet? Because I was definitely tired of posing at this point.

Middle two bumps=salt and pepper shakers.

The gorge looking in.

The half-crashed london bridge.

So this used to extend from the left side back to the mainland, and people could walk out onto it. Unfortunately a couple years ago it crashed....leaving some peeps stranded out on the second arch!!!

And the couple who were stranded got rescued by a news helicopter. And promptly started attacking the camera that was filming their rescue. Later the story comes out that the two were both happily married....to other people and were having affairs. So moral of the story is don't have an affair or a rock formation that is centuries old will crash and strand you in the middle of the ocean and you will get caught. karma.

Sooo....5000 pictures later. I headed back to Melbourne and my camera died:) Still a few more pics to come. Sorry on the super slow updates. It's been a crazy week trying to catch up with everyone and everything that I've missed in the past 5 months.