This morning we were up early, ready to explore Melbourne city centre with our own personal tour guide, who lives here! (Sylvie)

We mastered the Melbourne trains and their touch card ticket system then headed down Melbourne’s main high street.

Sylvie took us down fashion ally ways, art streets, to tea houses, quirky shops and we even saw a flash mob! Basically everything and everywhere that you would never think to do or see if you didn’t live in the city! We had a real insiders look at the quirkiness and artyness of the city.

For lunch we found a cute coffee shop in the back arty streets of Melbourne, crammed with cakes, wraps, scrambled eggs and a whole lot of locals – and it was delicious!
When Sylvie left for work, Nicole, Juliet and I headed off to browse the shops, gets some frozen yoghurt (we’re obsessed) and hunt down some face paint for tonight…

The reason being that we were going to an Aussie Rules Football Match! The game was St Kildas (a Melbourne team that we were supporting) again The Gold Coast.

We got the train there (as we knew what we were doing now) and arrived at a beautifully lit up stadium (the Etihad) overlooking the water.

Aussie Rules is a bizarre game but we immediately got so into it, screaming and whooping and booing and cheering! The game itself was created by the aboriginals but it’s basically a mix between rugby and football with a bit of basketball and netball thrown in. The pitch is oval shaped and so is the ball and the players can’t run more than two steps with the ball but they can tackle whoever, bounce it, kick it and if they catch a kick they get a free kick without being tackled themselves. The goal posts are similar to rugby and the ball has to be kicked through to score a goal but there is also two more outer posts and if the ball is kicked through these they get a point, then a certain amount of points (we couldn’t work out how many) creates a goal. It sounds complicated (which it is) but it was easy enough to follow and we seriously enjoyed it! It was so much fun watching them falling over trying to chase the oval ball and pushing each other while sprinting around on the oval pitch! What a great experience watching an Aussie rules Australia football match in Australia, with Australians!