My Melbourne Weekend

My Melbourne weekend was a big success. I started the adventure on Thursday after visiting our lovely venues. Molly (my co-worker from NRSI) drove me into Melbourne. After hearing countless horror stories about the location of my hotel (ie: "Oh, King Road? That's the strip club capital of Melbourne!", "Sure, I know where that is... isn't that the slums?", "Oh yeah - that's where the prison is") yeah, it was actually just fine! Molly went in with me to make sure all was right and I checked into my TINY little room shown here. It was literally just big enough for the bed but that's all I needed it for anyway.

Thursday was just getting started. I got in touch with my new swing pal, Darren, and we decided to meet up for dinner before dancing. Dinner was definitely interesting. We talked about dancing and then moved into traveling and that opened up the whole "American Aggrievances" conversation. I must have spent the entire dinner apologizing for all of the US's shortcomings. He hates the food, the government, the customs, the people and their attitudes, the US's involvement in the war and how they forced Australia to be part of it and the list went on and on! By the end of the dinner, I was SUPER ready to get to the dancing part of the night. Once we got to the club - the mood relaxed. I met up with another guy that I met on Facebook, Matt and he was super nice. Darren is on the left and Matt is on the right. Everyone at the club was really cool! It was funny - I must have been asked a dozen times "Where is that accent from?" For some reason that caught me off guard! I would say Georgia.. and I would still get blank looks sometimes. I danced a TON and had a great night. They definitely know how to dance - Everyone is tri-lingual here - Lindy, Bal and Charleston. Very impressive!

Friday I got to play tourist and actually I was on a mission that day. I had a ticket to the Footies (Australian Football which looks a lot like rugby don't tell that to an Australian) that night compliments of the paper we are working with and didn't realize it came with a dress code! I had a ticket in their suite and there were no jeans allowed! Oops - that's all I packed for the weekend! So, that was my cue to take advantage of Melbourne's famous shopping opportunities.. and there are plenty of them! I bought an entire new outfit with the help of a nice sales girl - totally in Aussie style. The biggest thing going here are these sweater dresses and yes girls... leggings. I had to do it! So, now I am officially Aussie-trendy.

That day I also had a great time taking the free trolley that runs around the entire city. It's called the City Link and even has a little recording that tells you the highlights of each stop. I definitely have to give it up for Melbourne for it's great public transport.

Later that evening it was time for the Footies! The stadium was right behind my hotel so I could walk there. A short walk past the very impressive train station and I was at the Telstrum Stadium! It was the Bulldogs vs. the Eagles (guess who I rooted for?). Our suite was really nice! We had a tasty free dinner and free drinks all night long. Yeehaw! I got a few more lessons on football (you can't have too many) and met some really cool people. Later that night a few of us continued the festivities at a club called CQ. It was really fun, really big and totally 80's! After all the that dancing it was back to hotel for some serious rest!



Saturday was another day of playing tourist. I tooled around the city for most of the day, hoping on and off the tram. I made my way over to Eureka! which is the tallest building in Australia. It's part offices, part apartments and VERY tall. You can go to the top to see all of Melbourne - so I did! It was a beautiful view - right around sunset so I hope the pictures come out! After that, I rushed over to The Docklands which is an up and coming area in the city with some funky art. First there was this bridge that was inspired by traditional fishing nets and then some strange modern art - yes, that's a cow in a tree.










Sunday was a last ditch effort to shop still I dropped so I hit the direct factory outlets for one more go! I finally made my way over to Flinders Street station to catch the train back to Dandenong! All in all, it was a great weekend get-away and opportunity to see a beautiful city!