AUSTRALIA | Mum visiting and backpacking with me - Part 1


Have you ever taken your mum on a backpacking trip??

Well, I had the opportunity to do it and it was such a nice experience. I guess she enjoyed it as well haha 

I can’t really say it was full on backpacking, as we had bits of flashpacking too since she is over 60 years old and I didn’t want to push it too much. Still she lost 4kg by the end of the trip haha It’s a good thing tho! But she jokes I was letting her starve, but it’s not true. I don’t think so at least :P We walked a lot, which is something she doesn’t do very often tho.

I bet you have seen this before haha


Everything started when she decided to come over to Australia for 6 weeks to visit me for the first time since I moved to the land down under! 

I was SUPER excited, I couldn’t stop thinking on everything I wanted to show her and places I wanted to take her, all the food, the drinks, native animals and so on.

Ah! And it was also her birthday :)
And since she was coming all the way from the other side of the world, and I wasn’t working at that time, I decided to take her on a trip to see some of Australia and Thailand.

Viv and I had been living in Melbourne for a couple of years by then and that was her first stop.

It was March so the weather was starting to cool down a little bit, not too bad tho. Still she complained all the time that I told her not to bring too much warm clothing and she was cold haha I guess I was kinda used to the crazy Melbourne weather. 

We spent her first and last week in Melbourne, so not really backpacking yet, but we did a lot I believe and here are some of the things we did :

Took her around the city to check out the CBD, Federation Square, Flinders Street Station which looks very similar to a station called ‘Luz’ in my hometown back in Brazil, had a look at all the overwhelming graffiti on Hosier Lane, enjoyed a lovely coffee and people watching on Degraves St. , walked along the Yarra River in Southbank, gambled some money at Crown Casino since in Brazil it is banned lol;
   

Flinders Street Station and one of the busiest crossings in Melbourne


Bought fresh produce at Queen Vic Market and enjoyed the night market, tram down to St. Kilda Beach and watched the sunset having a drink, spotted some penguins at the St Kilda Pier at night time, checked out the beach boxes at Brighton Beach, showed her that shopping malls are the same everywhere in the world (kinda)- Melbourne Central, Emporium… ; 
  

Morning walk at Brighton Beach


Spent a lovely afternoon at the Botanic Garden, showed the wonderful flowers at Fitzroy Gardens - she absolutely loves flowers! So guess what? She loved it haha, checked out the beautiful architecture of St. Patrick’s Cathedral, the Parliament House and the State Library, had a delicious coffee while watching the Hipster scene in Fitzroy, tasted the cheap and delicious food in Chinatown;

Fitzroy Gardens


She tried out the self-service machines at Woolworths/Coles, since this doesn’t exist in Brazil haha she loved i; Walk around the Docklands and went for dinner in front of the lit up Melbourne Star, went shopping at Harbour Town and DFO South Wharf;
  

Ballarat Sanctuary


Ah! We also rented a car to do day trip to the Great Ocean Road to see the stunning 12 apostles, luckily the weather was fantastic and went to Ballarat to the sanctuary so she could see some of the native animals.

The 12 (not 12 anymore) Apostles


Luna Park St. Kilda

And finally watch Cirque du Soleil for her birthday surprise!

I should probably say and ETC… As I’m sure I cannot recall every single thing we did hahaha but yep, those I guess were the main things in Melbourne/Victoria.
 

Then our travels were about to start! The fun, the adventure haha We were going to Sydney, Brisbane and the Gold Coast. Will mention some of our time there on the next post!

You can also check out the short video here :)

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