I have arrived in wonderful Australia!!! The journey here though was anything but wonderful or exciting. I knew it was going to be a long flight, and I braced myself for being extremely tired when I got to Melbourne. What I hadn't anticipated was getting sick about two hours in to the flight from Paris to Beijing. I slept very badly on the ten hour flight but I attributed my congestion and fuzzy head to jet-lag etc…I thought I would get better in the Beijing airport, and on the short flight to Shanghai. Nope. In Shanghai I had to gather my bags and re-check-in. My total for bags was overweight and I had to throw away some more stuff/move it to my backpack. Anyways, I boarded the plane to Melbourne feeling awful and hoping that no one would sit next to me. (That was the one redeeming thing about the flight to Beijing, no one sat next to me and I could stretch out as much as I wanted :). Unfortunately though there was someone in the seat next to me, but we actually ended up talking most of the flight, which was a lot of fun!) Before sleeping I took some Tylenol PM, Mucinex and Robitussen, to try and feel better. It did help a bit and I slept more than I had the previous night, but I woke up with three hours of flight time left, still feeling crappy. Before landing in Melbourne the flight attendants had to spray the cabin with disinfectant (according to Australia Law)…this just made me cough more and they probably should have just kept spraying the disinfectant! The plane was supposed to land at 9:30am and the flight attendants made numerous announcements that we would be landing "in 10 minutes". Our first few attempts to land were nixed by the weather in Melbourne, so the captain came on a couple of times saying that we would wait another 15-20 minutes. Our third attempt we were about to make it down and then we started picking up the pace and gained altitude. Apparently the airport was very full today and another plane was taking off…awesome. Finally we landed about an hour and a half late and I was very relieved.
The Melbourne airport is pretty small for the amount of people who go through. There were a lot of international flights coming through and I had to wait an hour and a half to have my passport checked. Then I gathered my bags and had to wait another hour in the line for customs. Luke, the friend I met on the plane, told me that the "Declared Items" line for customs was a lot shorter than the "Nothing to Declare Line" in the Melbourne Airport. Trusting a native Melbourn-er (???) I checked that I did have things to declare, which was partially true due to the mass amounts of chocolate I bought in France and also because I had a papyrus from Egypt and that is a plant particle. Well the line for "Declared Items" ended up being A LOT longer, and I waited a long while before the security people could check my bags. No, they did not go through the x-ray machine, a lady hand checked EACH BAG…basically pulling out the entire contents of EACH of my bags and then haphazardly throwing my stuff back in… I was polite about it all because I didn't want Australia to send me back to the USA because I was sick or something. (I looked awful.)
After making it through the whole airport ordeal I finally boarded the bus to South Cross Station to get to my hostel. Making it in to Melbourne the sun started to shine through the clouds and it became warmer. Getting off the bus I had misremembered the name of the hostel and didn't know where I was going. I went in to the train station to use the internet at a courtesy space and checked the hostel name. Luckily it is very close to the station and I walked there dragging my luggage behind me. I have no successfully checked in to the hostel, taken all of my bags upstairs and showered. Then I realized I had left my water bottle somewhere…not just a plastic bottle, but a nice reusable one, and I wanted it back!!! I went everywhere that I had gone, and then had the fleeting feeling that I had left it on the bus. Luckily though it was at the courtesy internet place in the train station! After reclaiming my water bottle I went to the grocery store to buy some PowerAde, (SO MUCH MORE EXPENSIVE HERE…grrr) and also to buy some Advil, because I didn't have any. I have now taken the Advil and am sitting in a little common room in the hostel writing this post. I am really hoping that the headache subsides soon, it's just a lot of pressure behind my eyes. Ahh!!! And even though I am extremely exhausted I am going to try to stay up until 9 so I can try and get on a normal schedule! That's really all I have, see everyone, I AM updating this more than my last blog…I already have 2 entries!!!
UPDATES: I am no longer sick, and have been enjoying Melbourne to its fullest. I have tried my darndest to get rid of my jetlag, but I still pretty much wake up every morning at 6am and go to bed at 9pm each night. Not too bad of a schedule though, it's kind of nice being the first one up in the hostel!
So far in Melbourne I have gone to St. Kilda beach, got my burn on [WARNING TO ALL FAIR SKINNED PEOPLE: 2 minutes in the sun without sunscreen will make you burn…The hole in the Ozone layer is RIGHT above Australia, after all. Also, remember to have Aussie rated sunglasses to protect your eyes. Any glasses costing less than $10 will most likely leave your eyes a nice shade of stoner red. ] I thought I was doing well on sunscreen application until I woke up the next morning (after my first beach excursion) a nice sort of splotchy color and with a burn on the bridge of my nose…which is now peeling.
The Queen Victoria Market is also incredible and has everything you could possibly want! I spent about an hour there looking at all of the different produce, and various vendors. Luckily I didn't have any money on me or I would have probably walked away with a couple bottles of wine, thanks to the nice man at the wine stand trying to sell me wine at 7:30am! Other than that, I have walked around pretty much all of the city, and it really is a very cool place. I also hit up the Crown Casino to check out the huge poker tournament that's going on there right now. I had to laugh at how seriously people take poker (sorry poker fans)…but it's amusing watching people throw stacks of Aussie dollars on a table to buy back in to a tournament they are most likely not going to win.
Anyways, to the whole point of this update…the AUSTRALIAN OPEN!!!!! The gates open at 10am, and because I have been waking up early, I walk down to Melbourne Park at about 8:30am, get in line at 9:15am and wait for them to open up. The first day I watched Sam Querrey lose to Lukas Kubot…it was a long match, but it seemed like Querrey was really cocky at the get go and it kicked him at the butt. He's also SUPER flatfooted. Okay enough tennis talk. I left at about 4pm yesterday. Today I basically did the same routine…and this time my early-ness paid off. I was walking around and I saw quite a few people clustered around one of the smaller courts. I wandered over only to see THE LOVE OF MY LIFE (aka Rafael Nadal) warming up on the court :)! I got a wonderful spot right on the fence about 10 feet from him, and watched until he was done warming up. I am glad that I did not purchase one of the upgrade tickets to watch him play in Rod Laver Arena though, because his opponent had to pull out due to injury…it would have been a waste of money. Instead of moseying around the smaller courts I walked to a new area today and discovered the Heineken Beer Garden. The area is only for 18+s and is equipped with deck chairs and big screens. The age limit ensures that there won't be a ton of little children running around, which is really nice, and it's a good place to watch the matches!
It's 6pm here, and I am currently at the hostel. I am going to head back to Melbourne Park to catch the later matches in a few minutes, but I'm finishing up this blog post so people can't accuse me of being a bad blogger!!! I leave for Brisbane tomorrow, and it will be nice to drop some of my stuff off so I don't have to drag it back to Melbourne when I come back down here again! I hope things are looking up after the floods though…it is such a tragic event and I'm hoping that I'll find some way to help while I'm up there.
Have a great day everyone!
