Having had an encounter with these nasty little creatures before, Crystal was understandably worried about what awaited us in Melbourne. For our first two nights, I had booked us into a hostel called The Exford. The Exford is rad. I love it. When I went to Melbs with Amelia, we spent two nights there and I thought it was shabby but also clean and charming. i tried to relay this to Crystal, but I was probably not all that convincing because I had started to second guess myself as well. Was The Exford really that great? Or clean? We were dropped off by a free shuttle and made our way up to check-in at The Exford (the check-in counter also happens to be a bar...I'm not sure Crystal's mind is put at ease as she looks around!!) The first night, we had booked a two person room and the following night would be switching to a three person room since Jeremy would be joining us. We got our keys and started the long climb up many flights of stairs. We found the room and slid the key card in, only to find that the room was a 4 bed room and people's stuff was scattered all over it...something had to be wrong! Yes, in fact, he had given us the wrong room. We went back down the stairs with all our luggage only to go right back up again! Crystal did a thorough check for bedbugs and was pleased to find that there were none, and also that The Exford had extra precautions (bedbug guards around the mattresses and signs all over the place saying that in no case was anyone to ever bring any sleeping bags or bedding past the first floor). That being solved, we thought we would find somewhere to eat dinner since it was 9 pm and we were hungry!
The Exford is on the corner of Russell St and AWESOMENESS (right in the heart of Chinatown). In Brisbane, finding a place to eat at 9 pm would be fairly difficult/almost impossible. Melbourne, however, is the city of endless possibilities! We wandered through Chinatown and saw a place that looked inviting. We had a chat with the ladies outside holding menus and were ushered in, only to realize it was BYO. We ran out, assuring them that we were just going to grab some wine and we'd be back ASAP. Whoops. We got our wine in the bottle shop conveniently located right under The Exford but were distracted by a sign saying there was a free comedy show upstairs...you can probably guess we didn't make it back to where we intended to have dinner. We grabbed some good seats for the show - it was intermission so everyone was up and wandering around. Apparently these seats had previously been occupied and this is how we became known as the "seat-jacking Canadians". We were used as material for a few of the comedians - luckily, it was in a pleasant way!! By the time the show was done (and for free comedy, it was pretty damn good!) the restaurant was closed. It was 11:30 pm on a Thursday but we were in MELBOURNE and of course we found a place just down the street. Our wine didn't go to waste as this new place was BYO as well and we got to drink it out of some plastic juice cups that the restaurant supplied.
The intention was to go to bed right after eating since we were so tired and wanted to explore Melbs the next day, but this didn't exactly happen. The bar at The Exford is apparently open till 7 am...we thought we'd have a beer there, then climb the crazy stairs to our room, but in between playing with the video jukebox, our conversation, and chatting with some Scandinavian backpackers we didn't make it back up till about 4:15 am. Eeep!
This is getting long again, so you'll just have to wait to hear about our further Melbourne adventures!!
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