Greetings from beautiful and sunny Melbourne!

Today we awoke to clouds but they quickly burned off to reveal that beautiful, blue sky we’d been missing. We even heard a few people exclaim that it was a glorious day!

We decided this would be beach day. We had planned on also going to the cricket match today, but I can tell you now that didn’t happen. We beached way too hard.

We caught the train and took it to Brighton Beach. Along the way every piece of fence and house you saw facing the train tracks was covered in graffiti. We’ve seen quite a lot of graffiti here in comparison to Sydney, so we wondered why that was. According to Wikipedia, street art here became really popular in the early 2000s. Over the past 20 years Melbourne has become well-known for its street art and even international artists have contributed to it. As to why this started, I’m still not too sure!

There was hardly anyone out and it felt like we had the beach to ourselves this morning. The sun was shining but there was a cool breeze coming off the water.

After lounging for a bit, we packed up and started walking along the beach. My tummy was ready for lunch so we stopped at a kiosk and purchased fish and chips. We sat in the shade of a palm tree and ate our lunch. We both decided it was a hearty serving!

From there we continued on and came across the famous Brighton Bathing Boxes. These 82 bathing boxes were built in the early 1900s in response to Victorian ideals of morality and seaside bathing. These boxes are mostly unchanged except for how they are brightly painted by their current owners.

At Brighton Beach, Jacob stopped and let the water touch his toes. I had to capture this historic moment to share with you.

We stopped for another beach break at Elwood Beach. Again, we had the beach mostly to ourselves. I guess not too many people are out on a Wednesday. Although we did learn this is summer break for the school-aged kids, so we have seen lots of kids and families about otherwise.

After a nice rest at Elwood Beach we packed up again and continued walking to our final destination beach of St. Kilda. We took a couple breaks along the way to take in the views. At one point we saw some birds and some people asked, “Are those penguins?” I wasn’t sure either so I snapped a photo.

The closer we got to the city, the smokier it got, but even though it looks hazy, we had good air quality all day.

We had our third beach plop at St. Kilda Beach. By this point the winds had really picked up and it was quite breezy, but the sun was shining! We re-applied sunscreen many times along the way, hoping we wouldn’t get burnt.

By this point we both really wanted some ice cream so we were on the hunt for that. After a short walk we found some at the Beachcomber Cafe. Jacob got cookies and cream and I got strawberry. It was delicious! I was going to take a picture to share with you, but I ate it too quickly.

We saw that there was a pier you could walk out on so we decided to do that. On the pier there was a sign that there was a penguin colony at the end, we decided to check that out. Along the way, we saw lots of people kite boarding to our right.

We made it to the end of the pier and looked for the penguins. We thought we spotted one and I said, “Is that a penguin?” But right after that it flew away and my question was answered. We have since learned we are most likely to see them around dusk.

We walked back across the pier and across the street to catch a tram back into town. It was getting too late for us to catch the cricket match. We also felt we’d also got our share of sun for the day. I’m sad to report the top of my feet got burnt, even after two sunscreen applications. Jacob’s knees got a little burnt, but otherwise we are somewhat relieved with how un-burnt we are.

We are out of here tomorrow and on our way to Mount Gambier via the Great Ocean Road. This is supposed to be a spectacular drive and the weather should be great.

We may even see some koalas along the way!

Until then!