Wednesday, May 30: Sydney (King's Cross)

This was perhaps the most unproductive day ever (which is not at all bad). I woke up at 12:00 as Nir finally showed up (after a 17 hour bus drive from Melbourne..). By the time I did laundry and by the time we were done with breakfast/lunch/dinner (I'm not sure what to call it), it was already evening. Then, we met up with Laura and Tyran (aka Saddam), who as it seems are staying at a close by backpackers. That's about it

Tuesday, May 29: Melbourne - Sydney (King's Cross)

In a last minute thing we decided to kgo to Sydney. Nir used the bus (part of the package), and I chose to fly. I figured I'd rather spend $100 than spend 17hours on a bus.

I arrived in Sydney at 18:40 and by 20:30 was at a backpacker in a part of town called King's Cross. It's the party section of town (as I vaguely recalled from my last trip to Australia some one and a half years ago), which was highly recommended by the Libanese person at the information desk at the airport.

After settling in I went with half the backpacker to a place called "The World Bar", which was a serious meat market...

Sunday, Monday, May 27-28: Melbourne

During both days Nir and I spent hours at a place called "Peterpan" which sells various attraction packages. Ultimately he got a package and I decided to wait until I figure out how long I will stay in Australia.

The usual pub thing persisted in both days, although St Kilda (this is the party area) seemed to be rather dead in the middle of the week.

There's this one place where they didn't want to let us in because they thought we were drunk. Ain't that something?

Saturday, May 26: Melbourne

Nir and I got back to the puzzle in the morning and spent another hour on it. If had a few more we could have finished it..

Anyway, we headed back to Melbourne and arrived around 15:30. Ben decided for whatever reason ( he may wish to stay in Melbourne for a while with a friend or something) that he wanted to continue on his own for a while, so it seems that Nir and I will use some buses from now.

Other than that we did the usual Saturday night thing in the evening - namely, the pub until 3:00am (closing time).

Friday, May 25: Great Ocean Road

The girls left before I even woke up as they needed to get to Melbourne by 12:00 to return their car. We might meet some of them in Sydney, we'll see.

This day was quite relaxed. We decided to head back to Melbourne via the Great Ocean Road, instead of through the highway. We got up to place called Apollo Bay, which is about 2.5 hours from Melbourne probably. There was a new YHA hostel there, which was probably as good as the backpacker in Arthur's Pass (which still maintains the title of "best backpacker"). However, we stayed at another one for $$ reasons...

The dinner section is now back. We made shepherd's Pie, which turned out pretty good.
Nir and Ben started a 1000 piece puzzle, and I chose not to join (as I know how addictive this can be). Ultimately I joined in, which meant I didn't go to bed before 2:30...

Thursday, May 24: Great Ocean Road

We headed out with the girls at 10:00am (they had their own car rental). It was quite fortunate to travel with them, since being girls they did their homework and knew what was worth seeing. Us three alone would have dicked around much of the time probably.. So we saw some Koalas, and lots of lovely views ending with the 12 Apostles and another place called the "London Bridge".

We got to a place called Port Fairy, where we spent the night. Of course, since we were 6 people it made sense to cook, which we did..

We finished the evening with a game of Pictionary, where team Israel was miserably defeated :(

Wednesday, May 23: Great Ocean Road

After a relaxing week in Melbourne (and a very productive one in terms of catching up on TV shows), I've joined Nir and Ben and we took off for the Great Ocean Road (GOR). It's about one hour drive to the beginning of the GOR. The GOR is about 150km long coastal road with rather beautiful views. The main attraction is the 12 Apostles, which are tall rocks that stick out of the ocean.

We stopped at a place called Lorne for the night (a little into the GOR). There we met three British girls: Laura, Sam, and Taryn (whose name sounds like "tyrant" and hence was dubbed "Saddam"). We had some evening Yaniv (Team Israel won - barely...), and then some Kiwi dude joined us for nothing else than a game of scrabble! He kicked everyone's ass.