Melbourne is a town 30 minutes north of my hometown in Florida. It’s also the coolest city in Australia. And pronounced funny: Mel-BIN not Mel-BORN. There are lots of airline deals in Australia and we were able to get $50 flights each way on Tiger Airlines. I have heard that Tiger Airlines is unreliable and some warned to avoid it completely. However, it was cheap and the flights were nonstop. In the three years I’ve been at Penn State (and the trips I took to visit my senior year of high school), I have experienced more cancelled and delayed flights thanks to the Philadelphia and State College airports than most people will experience in their life. Needless to say, Tiger didn’t scare me and all in all my flights went smoothly (minus a frightening landing on the runway in Sydney). I wouldn’t have wanted to spend my entire semester in Melbourne since it’s further south and therefore colder, but I’d highly recommend it for a visit… or the entire semester if you’d consider yourself a hipster.

Day 1: St. Kilda. We arrived in Melbourne at 1:30pm. By the time we were picked up by the shuttle bus to take us to our hostel and weaved in and out of the city traffic, it was already 3:30pm. We stayed at Hotel Discovery (though it’s a hostel, not hotel), which was clean, cheap, centrally located and not too rowdy. Once settled, we took the city tram ($4 each way) to St. Kilda where we saw a beautiful sunset. After walking along the boardwalk and finding some delicious fish and chips along the main road in St. Kilda, we down the pier to find a small penguin colony. The penguins were adorable and made the funniest noises. It’s very rare to have wild penguins in such a populated area, so they’re colony is closely monitored by a local organization. There is a day trip from Melbourne to Phillips Island, which advertises wild penguin sightings, but we were able to see penguins for free in St. Kilda… so neat!

Day 2: Street Art and Carlton United Brewers. Melbourne is famous for it’s street art. Some of the “art” is just your everyday graffiti, but if you find the right alley, you can stumble upon real creativity! One of my friends found a map of street art locations online and we used this as our guide. The map led us through some cute alleys that were lined with shops and boutiques – so trendy! We also took a stroll through Fitzroy Gardens. The gardens are a step above most city parks and reminded me of a garden I visited in San Francisco. After the gardens, we took a tram to the Carlton United Brewers factory. With a 2-for-1 coupon and a student discount, the factory tour only cost $10 a person. I love factories tours (especially ones with free tastings) so I had a lot of fun here, even though the factory operations had already shut down for the weekend. Carlton is one of the most common beers in Australia, but the CUB also makes other brews, including Fosters. Though most Americans would think Foster’s is super popular over here (after all, “Fosters is Australian for beer”), it’s actually not. After the tour, each guests was allowed to sample four beers out of a selection of ten, including two ciders. Even better was the opportunity to play dress up in a giant beer costume while standing behind the bar. Later on, we found some more street art and ate dinner at Trippy Taco in Fitzroy near Brunswick St. The $9 burritos were a steal for Mexican food in Australia and they were real tasty.

Day 3: Great Ocean Road. No trip to Melbourne is complete without a day trip along the Great Ocean Road. This is known as one of the most scenic drives in the world. The whole drive would take two days (to get to Adelaide), but the most popular route is from Melbourne to the Twelve Apostles. My friend Bone was feeling adventurous and decided that he wanted to drive the road himself. Since tours of the Great Ocean Road leave you stuck on a big bus with no control of your day and they cost about $100 a person, we obliged to let Bone drive. The drive is frightening and I felt like I might throw up a couple times, but when I did have my eyes open looking over the side of the windy cliff, it was beautiful. We set out about 8:30am from Melbourne and saw our last sight at about 4:45pm.

Our stops included:

• Bells Beach – One of the best surf beaches in Australia. The ways were HUGE!
• Split Point Lighthouse – This is a good alternative to the Otway Lighthouse if you don’t mind not climbing. The Otway Lighthouse is a pretty far detour and costs money to climb, but most tour groups go there.
• Great Ocean Road Arch and Diggers Statue
• Kennett River – There’s a campground and a small mini mart here. Just off the road you can see koalas up in the trees. It was unfortunately raining when we were here, but I did get to see a koala chowing down on some eucalyptus and then go hopping through the tree!

• Apollo Bay – This is the last town before the 12 Apostles so stop here if you’re hungry!
• Gibson Steps
• 12 Apostles – The main attraction along the Great Ocean Road. There were a million people here and it was so windy everyone was blowing around, but the 12 Apostles really are an impressive sight!

• Loch Arch and Gorge – Not a far walk from the car park so worth the stop. You can even walk down to the water here.
• The Arch
• London Bridge – It was so rainy I didn’t get out of the car here.
• The Grotto – The Arch, London Bridge, and the Grotto are all very close to each other once you’ve past the 12 Apostles. Not all the tour groups stop at these places.
• Timboon – This is a random small town on the road back east to Melbourne. We had some great pizza at the only open food shop there. From here it was an hour and 40-minute drive back to Melbourne along dark forest roads and highway.

Location: Melbourne, Australia