Phillip Island day trip

by anna | Itinerary

Phillip Island is more of a peninsula than an island, to start with. With a  group of Mexican and Colombian friends we rented cars, and they didn’t have a minivan where the seven of us could fit (because, of course, we decided to go on a road trip the day before) so we had to take two cars.

Maru Park

After an hour or so on the road I was astonished when I realised no one would speed over the 100km/h. The Maru Koala & Animal Park was a little zoo with wallabies, kangaroos, rabbits, lamas, wombats and a horse. Obviously, the first think I did was go to pet the horse. Most of the zoo’s I knew of in Australia made you pay an extra 25 bucks to feed animals. In Maru Park we had included with the entrance fee the option to feed kangaroos and wallabies. We had to pay for the food.

Phillip Island

After visiting Maru Park we kept driving up to the “end” of the peninsula. We walked every beach and stoped at every lookout. It was lunch time by the time we got there, so we had fish and chips in the restaurant.

After walking around the “end” of the peninsula, we drove back to a small lake, where we saw 4 wallabies in the wild. I guess Australians are used to see them, but for us foreigners was a highlight.

When the sun was setting we sat down with a couple hundreds of people to watch the little penguins. They get out of the water and walk about 300 hundred meters to sleep in little wood houses. There are the smallest penguins of the world (about 15cm tall). It is completely dark when the penguins are walking. It is absolutely forbidden to take pictures with or without the flash on.

Day trip to the Great Ocean Road

by anna | Itinerary

The Great Ocean Road is a scenic coastal drive. It has stunning sceneries and it is one of the most photographed places in Australia together with the Sydney Opera and Uluru. We did a day trip and luckily we had a sunny day and it only started raining when we were at our last stop. During our two hour trip back to Melbourne we went from light rain to heavy rain to hail. It is true what they say, 4 seasons in a day!

Great Ocean Road

The road starts quite impressive from the beginning. The views to the sea from different perspectives and the constant flora change. One of our stops was a walk through wooden bridges in a rainforest. The weather change from inside the rainforest and outside is so big, humidity takes over.

After the rainforest walk we made it to the Twelve Apostles. The Twelve Apostles are 12 rock formations emerging from the water. At the moment due to natural causes like tidal there are fewer remaining apostles. We got to go down to the beach and chill there before the rain caught us.

Koalas and Kangaroos: Officially in Australia

by anna | Itinerary

I’ve been a month here and still haven’t post a picture of kangaroos and/or koalas? Don’t worry, the day has arrived!

Day tour with The Real Experience

After a relaxed week, on Saturday we went on a day trip with Real Australia, a student focused travel agency, to Healesville Sanctuary and other stops along the way.

The first stop was a chocolate factory, where we had free pills of chocolate to taste. It was 10:30am and the factory was already full. We also tried melted mint chocolate, yummy.

Healesville Sanctuary

After that we drove to the zoo and the itinerary of the day was the platypus show (also known as Perry the platypus from Phineas & Ferb), then the birds show and finally the meat cake lunch, which I’ve decided that even if it’s not bad, it is not my thing.

After that, we had free time and we went to watch the kangaroos, koalas, Tasmanian demons and snakes.

Richmond winery

When we finished we went to the Richmond winery, huge vineyards. We all know I am not a wine kind of girl but I’d say the fruity reds are my favourites. We tasted all types of wines and without an exaggeration we tasted the worst and driest wines of the continent! Truth to be said, we learned how to look like we are the most professionals sommeliers of the world.

When finished we had a boomerang lesson, and I discovered it is not a science but a random luck for it to come back to you. It was pretty fun to try though.

Discovering Melbourne CBD

by anna | Itinerary

I love the city of Melbourne. It is so beautiful. Thinking that I will live here for the next six months while on a university exchange makes me very happy. I have already some favourite places.

Melbourne CBD

The first day that we went to the city CBD, we stopped at Flinders Street. It’s where we find Federation Square. We walked around for a bit, and got to Parliament, saw the cathedral and five more churches (there is one on every corner).

Melbourne Star

This week we also went to the Melbourne Star, which is Melbourne’s giant wheel. It does the complete spin with 30 minutes, the cabins are big and you have heaters on them. It was just past sunset time, so the lights of the city started to turn on while we were up. Ignoring the off voice talking about the city, we spent the entire time taking pictures and enjoying the views. As you will see in the pictures, Melbourne is a city that only has skyscrapers in the CBD and not one in the rest of the city.

Graffiti Lanes

Also in the centre of the city we can find some graffiti lanes where doing graffiti is legal so it changes quite often as new artist paint on top of old graffiti.