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Hello everybody. I hope that you're well. My name is Christian and welcome to my channel Backpacking Bananas. I'm still in Melbourne. If you watched the last video, you may have seen that we arrived in Melbourne on our big drive across Australia. If you don't know, my boyfriend Ben and I are relocating from Perth to Sydney and we are driving there via the Southern coast. And we've come a long way. We've finally arrived in Melbourne. We've spent a few days in the CBD and to be honest for the last few days, we've just been relaxing. We've been seeing friends and family. My auntie and uncle live in Melbourne and that's been really nice. Now we've got our final few days in Melbourne and I'm
making another vlog because now we're staying in St. Kilda, which is known to be like the backpackers haven of Melbourne. And although I've been to Melbourne quite a few times, I've never really been to St. Kilda properly. I've never explored it properly. I don't really know it and so that's what this weekend is going to be all about. Now, if things look a little bit weird around me, it is Halloween tonight, so quite a lot of people are dressed up. Ben and I just went for dinner in a place called Quan 88, had a nice Vietnamese kind of a cheap eat. I think my meal was $19 and that was for a noodle soup with one ton and barbecue pork. It was delicious actually. But now I'm just walking back
to our hostel at sunset and it's so pretty. There's Luna Park. The iconic. And the sunset is just up there. How beautiful. Right now it's probably like 18 degrees. Like Melbourne weather is just so up and down and it's been pretty cold over the last few days, but on Sunday it's going to be 30 degrees. I'm so excited. We're at the end of the pier and you can see penguins here, but I don't know if we can just see them or if it's just a ticketed thing.
We are staying at Roma St. Kilda and like I mentioned, it was Halloween and they were having a fun pre-drink party in the hostel. I love how much they decorated the place. They even had a flash tattoo station. It was pretty wild actually. I don't think I was ready for any flash tattoos that day. And let me show you around this whole hostel. Roma St. Kilda is in the same group as Bounce Melbourne, so I was stoked to stay here because the standard of these hostels is just one above the rest of basically all the others in Australia. We were staying in one of their suites, which had a nice big king bed and lounge area. I love that the rooms always come with a dedicated workspace area as well as having coffee
making facilities. They also always have wardrobe hanging space as well as a full length mirror. Hallelujah. In the en suite, we also have a full set of toiletries included, which they even have in the dorm rooms and communal bathroom blocks here at Roma. But speaking of communal areas, there are so many spots to hang out in Roma, including their co-working space, which as a digital nomad girly, I obviously love, especially the phone booths. I really think more hostels should have these because it's so valuable to have in hostels a small, quiet, private space where you can make phone calls and not feel like you're bothering anyone else. Anyway, how cool is the rooftop here? It has a bar and yet another place to hang out and meet
people. Of course, there is a nice full size communal kitchen to use, which is kept immaculately clean with plenty of pantry space and some nice big fridges. I noticed there was even this little book exchange in the dining room, which is super cute. I do have a discount code for the Bounce Roma collection. Use Bananas when booking direct and you'll get 5% off. So make a note of that for when you're ready to book your Australia accommodation because I can promise you these are the best hostels in Australia. Good morning. It is Saturday morning, which means it's the park run. And I've already done a park run in Melbourne last week. I did the Albert
Melbourne park run, which I feel like is the biggest and the most iconic, dare I say? Anyway, so we're doing a different one this week. I decided to come to Studley park run, mostly because it was like the next closest, but also it looks really nice. I do think it's going to be hilly, so not a fast park run, not that I'm in the mood for that at all, but I think it's going to be a beautiful one. I feel like we're in a very nature-ous area and only like a very short a ride away from the CBD of Melbourne. We are setting off a trail run today cuz apparently that is what this is.
Here we go. I'm running with Megan today and it's Megan 200 park run. You don't get t-shirt for that, but that's still wildly impressive. Thank you. Oh. 206. Oh, this is cool. Woohoo, we did it. I think in like 34 minutes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Which I say is pretty good considering there's a fair bit of elevation. Very hilly. And now we're at the Studley Park Studley Park boathouse for a coffee. Ah, she's got her coffee and I've got mine in my keep cup. You excited? We've come into a place that I had starred on my Google Maps. I actually can't remember who recommended it, but it's called Miz Felix and I've gone for
some fritters of some description. It's like a fritter salad and Ben's gone for the Benny, which was like potato gratin, hollandaise, poached eggs and beef brisket. It looks delicious. And how does it taste? Kind of cold. Oh no. Mine is very tasty. And this is like our one, I guess like bougie brunch in St. Kilda cuz we're they were on a backpacker budget and I want to do the backpacker thing sometimes when there's a really nice brunch spot that's by the water. I want to check it out.
Going back to my backpacker roots right now because we are making pasta for dinner in the hostel kitchen. Picked up this beef ravioli. It's just kind of unnecessary, but I really fancied it. We picked up some chorizo. We got some romano tomatoes on offer for $3. And then we got some cream cheese, the cheapest and finest stuff from Woolworths. So we spent a total of $20 for the two of us for dinner, which I'd say was not ridiculously cheap, but I don't think groceries are ridiculously cheap in Australia and I think we could have done this cheaper, but I'm pretty happy with how this has turned out. How's that for some backpacker grub in our room as well? There's a bar crawl going on tonight, the Batmania bar
crawl, which I would have loved to have joined, but like I don't know what it's been about this week, but it's just completely taken out of us. Maybe it's the whole road trip. We are completely shattered and just really needed a night in to be honest and we've got this huge big screen TV and we thought, you know what? Let's just have a night in and let's normalize that even if you, you know, want to be on a budget, want to be within the backpacking scene, you don't always need to be partying and drinking and going out, though that is very fun and I hope to be back to do the Melbourne bar crawl another time.
I basically just completely shot through Dandenongs up this morning cuz I had to because it's going to be really hot today in Melbourne, like 31 degrees and I have a long run to do, so I was like I'll better do it before the sun comes up. So I set off just after 6:00 a.m. I'll be finishing just before 8:00 a.m. But how beautiful is this? So the route I'm taking, I'm going to go all the way around Albert Park, which is actually where I did the park run last week and it would have made so much sense for me to do the Albert Park run yesterday because Roma St. Kilda is right by Albert Park, but I didn't want to repeat it, which is why I went to Studley.
Anyway, so nice to come here again. So I'm going to go all the way around the lake and then I'm going to head onto the esplanade and see how far down the esplanade I run before my time is up. I made it to the beach. Really struggling today. I feel very heavy. Oh, I got to keep going. So, after my run this morning, I went into the CBD and I was with my friend Rochelle. We went to Public Bakery and I got a pistachio cronut. It was so good. They had so many pastries in that bakery. And then I met up with Darrell from Welcome to Travel and we filmed a video together, which you may be seeing on our channel very soon. It's about reacting to TikTok
advice about Australian working holiday visas. So, it was a really fun one to film. And then to be honest, I just crashed in our room. I had a nice little nap. And it's still 31° outside. And so, I want to go to the St. Kilda beach and sunbathe and maybe go for a swim cuz this is the hottest day we've had on our whole road trip. Like, most days of this road trip I haven't even been able to go out with like a t-shirt on. And here I am with a t-shirt and it's going to be hot and I'm so excited. Just going to pick up some things in Woolies. Going to have a picky bits dinner. That sounds nice, doesn't it? And I'll show you some of my favorite picky bits to get. So, first of all, the honey and pistachio cream cheese.
100% favorite cream cheese. Paired with Okay, these are bougie and you can get crackers way cheaper than these. These are 350, but they're very good and a pairing for that cream cheese. Does sushi count as picky bits? Well, it does today. Oh, we've got to get a hummus snack pot. I like the high protein one and it looks like it's on a small offer. 360 for this. These are the beautiful Catani Gardens. Lovely sunset spot or lovely picnic spot. I want to go on the beach though. I want to swim. It is busy here down the end of the pier, but there's a proper vibe going on. I'm not sure I'm ready to dive in.
We shall see if that happens. It was really refreshing, but I've had a faux pas. Sliced me toe open. Well, I haven't sliced me toe open. It's just a Oh, this does not look good at all. It's not very deep and I was under the impression it was deeper than it is, so I'm actually glad I landed feet first cuz I would not have liked this injury to have been on my head. Ooh, it's really sticky. Well, that was a very abrupt ending to our little beautiful time at the pier, unfortunately. Though, I feel like that is just That's taking me back to my old school backpacker days like just having like split opening toes from backflipping off
things. More so in like Southeast Asia, but I was like, I can't believe this is happening right now. I had a little cry and Ben went to the Chemist Warehouse to grab some like antiseptic and plasters and get them on my toe as soon as possible. And now it's wrapped up and I hope I make a speedy recovery because that would suck for it to stay painful. I've had some painkillers as well. But anyway, [snorts] we're just back in the room. Going to have a chilled night and we're going to hopefully get this big screen TV turned on because that's going to be lush as well. We left Melbourne at 7:30 a.m. when it was absolutely chucking it down with rain because we were doing the drive to Sydney all in one day. Just
look at that on Google Maps, over 700 km to go on one singular road. Our initial plan was to spend a few days taking the coastal route to Sydney, but after the extra time we had in Melbourne, we were kind of just ready to finish our time on the road. I also figured that since Sydney is going to be our new place to settle, I will easily be able to do weekend trips to all of these lovely places on the coast between Melbourne and Sydney. So, why try to rush them now? So, it took us about 11 hours including rest and fuel stops to make it to Sydney. And my god, it was raining even worse there than it was in Melbourne that morning. But what a relief that we finally made it. Just like that, we have completed our
road trip across Australia driving over 5,000 km from Perth to Sydney. And it's now time to start our new lives. I have so much to share with you already, but I'm going to save it for the next video. I really hope you guys enjoyed this video and this series and I will see you in the next one. Bye-bye.
