night swimming

overall its easy to say that melbourne is a nice city to live in, very "livable", as the surveys and listings claim. i definitely miss many features of it. especially sushi lunches. and sparkling wine. and wearing what i want without men staring. and the HUGE H&M. although if they hadnt had a sale, i doubt i wouldve filled my luggage with their products so eagerly - the normal prices are relatively okay of course, but coming from turkey, kind of everything is just expensive.

while looking for a place to stay in melbourne was a lot of stress and hassle, i see the positive of it, which is that we got to see 3 kinds of local living:
-the trendy & upscale near the beach neighborhood of St Kilda
-skyscraper living with a rooftop pool in CBD
-an aussie classic: a multicultural shared house in a nice neighborhood walking distance from the center (Carlton)

this Mad Max trailer got me really excited. much more so than i expected. looks like good stuff!!

we flew to Sydney with Jetstar, local cheapo airline. it was fine, but one the way back our flight was cancelled and i was panicking for a moment. they then offered a flight to another airport in Melbourne, which suited us just perfect. so, no harm done, they handled it well.

some memories from Sydney;

we stayed near Chinatown at Quest worldsquare apartments. good, busy location with a lot going around it.

doctor and i celebrated our 5 year anniversary in Sydney. i reserved us a table from this cool italian restaurant (Belloccio). also a very gay restaurant, from the owner down to all the guests. only we looked suspiciously hetero :D lovely place- we had a great night.

Tiramisu!

Alex, whom i knew through Alina in Istanbul, now lives in Sydney and took us out to see New Town's nightlife and to the beach on sunday. it was a great picnic day and a bbq on his backyard with some hefty steaks topped it off. in short: awesome.

Avalon and Palm Beach sceneries:

the water was (naturally) too cold for me to swim PLUS i left my bikini in Sydney, so, i just hung out and watched doctor do his swim routine.

our hotel had a heated pool so FINALLY even i got a proper swim. it was the night so i popped in in my underwear...   half of the pool was covered and the half not, so it was kind of cool, floating thre looking at the night sky and skyscrapers around...   one of my best memories from the whole 2 months.

there was a building with miniature Sydney under the glass floor. it was fascinating.

botanical gardens with the city in the bg. i met a guy named Niko in Melbourne at a Couchsurfing meeting on the wednesday before he headed to Sydney and he was going there as well, so we decided to meet up. had a lovely afternoon walking around the docks and the garden. whats interesting is he has also lived in Istanbul, next door to where doctor used to live. he will come over for a visit in the spring maybe so hopefully we can meet again over in Istanbul.

uh, and now i read turkish gov has once again blocked youtube, facebook and twitter all at once. oh well.