Melbourne (the r is silent)!

Well, it's that time again for me to put aside the procrastination and push forward with this! :) After the Gold Coast we flew straight into the freezing cold of Melbourne! Luckily I was prepared with my red racing stripe spandex to stave off the cold, the two of us have been through some cold times, and I was not let down as usual! :)

We flew in super late on Friday night and didn't get in to our hotel until about 2 in the morning, luckily there were huge pictures of Mick Jagger plastered all over the walls so we felt very safe getting to our room! Our friend Laura who is from Texas and graduated from BYU but is living in Sydney for work, flew down to meet us and got there first thing Saturday morning! It was way great to change things up a bit with someone new, but she may or may not have been ready to pull her hair out by the end cause she couldn't quite handle us and by handle us I mean we might be a little overwhelming for most people at times, like anytime we're awake! :) I mean I can't speak for everyone but I know I'm pretty pleasant and fun to be around always, so maybe I'm just being paranoid! :) haha


This was our hotel, I think it says "Classy, yet moderately priced with a mean continental breakfast" how about you?

Saturday we just spent the day exploring the city and we were there on a weekend of some big design thing that was going on throughout the whole city, so there was different stuff set up and on display. It's a cool city, very European compared to Sydney and just beautiful! This was also the big day we got to see Wicked, which was pretty much the whole reason we came! It was the Australian premiere of the most amazing musical of all time! Not too many people had heard about it and I just sat through the whole thing thinking, "These people don't even know what kind of a treat they're in for!" :) The cast was phenomenal and it was just as good as ever. That night we ate some authentic Greek that stays open all night and then went clubbing at a place called Qbar, that was recommended by our receptionist..... It was as good a time as you can have as far as bi-clubs go..... :) haha Needless to say we were getting looks from both sides.... awkward!


Here's our yummy Greek, I would also like to mention Brighton's sweet vest, she searched high and low for this, just so she could take a little piece of Australia home with her!

On Sunday we went searching for a ward to go to church. Brighton and Wendy had a friend who had just gotten home from Melbourne and told them where to go, so we set off on a 2 hour long adventure and ended up only missing sacrament, yay for us! We also chose the perfect week because it was soup Sunday and the ward just welcomed us into their fold and we were fed mighty fine! We even had a few offers to come over for Sunday dinner, but we still had some exploring we wanted to do! After that we went back into town where they had an open house with alot of the famous buildings for free and we got to see the Regency Theatre Ballroom, St. Peters Cathedral, Capitol Theatre it was all very cool and the architecture was incredible!! Later on we ate dinner at a place called the Pancake factory cause we had a coupon for buy one get one free short stack. We didn't know if that would if that would fill us up so we decided to get a side of potato skins to share, there was a regular for like $8 and a large for $12 when we asked the waitress if a large would be enough to share she just said, well it depends on how hungry you are, we should have taken that as a sign..... So we ordered the large and this is what we got....


Needless to say, we all got our fill and then some, we actually almost couldn't finish and thought about taking it down the street to help the less fortunate :) haha


Don't worry though, we found our midget twins in that very restaurant, they were so funny and short!


Wendy loves this street, and for anyone who knows Wendy the reason why should be very clear!

Monday was our last day in Melbourne and we decided to hit up the botanical gardens right by our hotel, they were very pretty, but let's be honest a bunch of plants can only capture my attention for a brief time period and it was long before we were trampsing through the bushes making up stories as though this were our native bush!


This bird thinks just because its got a long droopy neck it's better than me, but I'm here to tell you that's not the case, so what if my neck is vertical and unstretchy, I'm still a person!

Later on we headed down to St. Kilda's which is right by the coast and where we heard they have some really good food! We ended up eating at this Italian place that was really good. Then we took a walk along the beach, the beaches aren't near as nice as the ones in Sydney and it was freezing cold!

So we're at the restaurant getting ready to order and they have pizza which sounds so delicious but they only have a small and a large. Small doesn't sound near big enough to be filling but I'm not quite sure if I can handle the large, but price wise it's not that much more. So I ask our cute little ole' Italian waitress about the sizes and she says, "oh yeah for sure a small will be plenty for you, there are 4 big pieces, the large is too big there are 8 pieces, small is fine", so naturally I hesitate for a minute and then order the large all to my self. Well later on she comes out with everyones food, Wendy and Laura ordered pasta and Brighton had a small pizza and then makes her own special trip for my massive family size pizza all to myself, sets it in front of me and says, "Here's for the hungry girl!" haha That was the big joke the rest of the time!


I had a midget in my pocket I was planning on sharing with....



I guess I thought we were playing thumbs up 7 up!

That night we went up Eureka tower, you go 99 levels in 38 seconds! It was crazy fast and made your ears pop like crazy! Then of course we had to check out the casino in Melbourne we heard its the best one around, but to my dismay they only had 1 craps table, what a joke, and it was a $10 min, I know I come across as a high roller, especially the way I'm wearing the same clothes in all my pics, but at this point I was running out of my money and as much as I wanted to win big I didn't want to lose big either! :)


This was on top of the skytower, people were just wanting to snap our pics like crazy, who were we to say no?


This was our $14 big deal movie theatre where we had the place all to ourselves and we couldn't help but wonder in what era our awkward chairs had been the "it" thing!