Melbourne, Day One

As happy as I was to be with friends in Dunedin, I wasn't there for too long. When I realized that I wasn't going to be able to stay in New Zealand (this time around, anyway), I started researching other working holiday options, to find that Australia was basically my only remaining hope. As much as I'd enjoyed my trip to Sydney earlier in the year, I didn't get the sense that I wanted to live there. I'd heard good things about Melbourne (that it is, in essence, a larger version of Wellington), so I decided to check it out before applying for the visa.

Looking at a map, Australia and New Zealand aren't that far apart, and many people that I've spoken to get the sense that they really are quite close (or the sense that they're the same country, but that's a different conversation entirely). They're not. Even though Melbourne is on the New Zealand side of the country, it was still a 3.5 hour flight across two time zones to get there.

Most of my first day was taken up by travel (Dunedin to Christchurch, then Christchurch to Melbourne), and I spent more time gawking than taking pictures once I hit the city. This was my first view of it, on the bus in from the airport. The skyline vaguely reminds me of Denver.

I was staying at an Airbnb on the edge of Chinatown. There's a great mix of old and new in the CBD, more pictures to come.

Melbourne is renowned for its alleyways, for the street art and bars and restaurants that can be found there. First up for me was this lovely Italian place.

My first impressions of Melbourne: fun, funky, and HOT. After a year in New Zealand, I was ill equipped to handle any temperature above about 75F (24C), and it was well above that for most of my stay.