I'm currently sitting at home, still in my PJ's at 3pm, sick from work with my most annoying souvenir from Melbourne - a cold :( Despite the sneezing it was an otherwise awesome holiday jam packed with things I'll never forget.
Tutankhamun Exhibit and Melbourne Museum
Our first adventure was seeing the amazing Tutankhamun exhibit at the Melbourne Museum. After a 4h red eye flight from Perth we managed to sneak in a few hours of sleep at Adam's house before heading out. Even with the Berocca and Nodoze we were still having a bit of trouble staying awake, but the exhibit was wonderful. My favourite thing was one of the treasures pulled from Tutankhamun's tomb - a beaded bracelet with a scarab beetle closing mechanism. I was really hoping they'd have a replica in the gift shop, and they did! However it was $500 so I gave it a miss :(
After lunch we hung around the Melbourne Museum for a bit and saw their fabulous collection of taxidermed animals, rocks and minerals, and bugs. I wasn't expecting it, but to my pleasant surprise it was more of a natural history museum. We even found a bug similar to the one we'd found on our driveway!
To finish off a busy first day, we ended the night with some amateur live comedy for the Melbourne Comedy festival. We entered the "comedy club" (which was actually the 2nd floor living of the first floor bar's owner) dead tired, but Josh Makinda woke us right up with a super funny and intimate show.
Melbourne Zoo
This was the highlight of my trip. The zoo itself was fairly ordinary, but Pooja had organised for us to have a giraffe encounter, which involved getting up close to the elegant animals with a group of 6 friends. We were allowed to feed the giraffes carrots, but we weren't allowed to touch them. They're quite timid animals, and they pull their heads away if you make any sudden movements or try and touch their faces.
I managed to sneak in a quick pat while one of them was trying to pry a carrot piece from my hand with it's long grey tongue. I never thought I'd be so close to such a large and gentle animal!
The Great Ocean Road
We hired a car and spend a couple of days on the road driving to Port Campbell and the 12 Apostles. On the way we saw some awesome sights, like the lighthouse from Around the Twist, and we even had a midnight stroll in the forrest to see some glow worms, which were almost impossible to photograph. I was actually a bit scared about seeing the glow worms - trekking through a forrest in the day is scary enough, but at night surely I would never make it out alive! However it was tourist season so we were accompanied by gaggles of torch wielding forrest explorers, so I felt a little more at ease. The glow worms were very pretty, like little blue fairy lights hung randomly on rocks and ferns.
The 12 Apostles were lovely, but extremely packed with tourists, so we didn't stay too long.
On the way back we stopped to do a tree top walk which made me realise that I have a slight fear of heights! At this point in the trip a few of us had started coming down with a cold so the tree top walk was spotted with bouts of tree top sitting down. My favourite part was looking down on the fields of ferns which looked like big green fireworks.
Melbourne
Back in Melbourne we spent our last day shopping and hanging out at restaurants and cafes. The food in Melbourne was lovely! My food highlight was Dalmatino's, a Croatian restuarant. I ordered the chicken soup with polenta (soothed my cold right down) and a shot of slivovita (plum brandy, also good for my cold). My dessert highlight was the Lindt factory where I had a beautiful hot chocolate and a couple of delicious macrons.
This break was one of those holidays you need a holiday from, but I really enjoyed it. It was lovely to travel with my uni friends, with whom I'd never travelled for some reason, and we packed in a lot of sights so I feel like we definitely got the most out of our trip.
Hope everyone had a great Easter!
I got very excited today when Yvonne and Stef told me that in Bern there is a hole in the ground in the middle of the town centre with bears inside. I was like, is it on purpose? And they were like yes, but someone recently fell in and got eaten. I was sold! So today we took a day trip to Bern to see the bears, do some shopping, and have a drink at the Einstein cafe. 
Our first task was unsuccessful. Apparently bears hibernate in winter, so there were no bears, stupid bears! However the bear thing was exactly how Yvonne and Stefan described it. In the middle of the city, there's a giant pit decked out with things bears would enjoy like big rocks and caves and the like (minus the bears). We took the next best option and played on the wooden bear statues in the old enclosure.
Our last stop was the Einstein Cafe, built under the house where Einstein stayed in Bern for a while. It was lovely and warm, a perfect end to a capital day.
Today Yvonne and I did snow shoeing (raquette) in Vue Des Alps. We left behind a massive fog blanket in Neuchatel to find a clear and sunny perfect day in the mountains. We chose to do a 2h long trek which was half through the valley and half through the forrest. The two halves of the trek were really different, and at the middle of the track there was a restaurant where we stopped for a much needed hot chocolate and sandwich.
Raquette through the mountains was very serene (I love the crunching of the snow), but also quite hard! There were a lot of sections that were very steep, and even downhill was quite taxing because you had to be very careful not to slide and hurt your ankles. We definitely got a workout, so hopefully that earns me a few more macarons.
On the way back we stopped at a hot bath to warm our weary muscles. This is something that I'd never heard of before - in Switzerland there are open air baths (kind of like giant swimming pools with jets and showers and the like) filled with naturally hot water from the mountains. There were people of all ages, but I have to say it was mostly young people getting all hot and heavy all over the place! Despite the awkwardness, it was very invigorating and I definitely appreciated it after a long day of raquette. 
A couple of the girls left earlier on, but Amy and I stayed for the fireworks. This year volunteers were walking around handing out "3D" glasses to watch the fireworks with. At first, Amy and I were skeptical (aren't fireworks 3D already?), but MY GOD it was the best fireworks show I've ever seen! 
It was actually so intense at some points that I needed to take a moment to catch my breath. I managed to capture some footage through the glasses, but it's a meagre representation of what we actually saw. It was like every spark of each firework was multiplied by 10 while shooting rainbows at your face.
A couple of days ago, Amy and I executed project Charlie Meets George. Charlie is Amy's King Charles terrier, and George is my pet dwarf lop bunny. We were sure they'd be best of friends!
At my workplace we have a yearly Easter Lunch Celebration where everyone gathers to have lunch and eat way too much chocolate. This year George was the special guest star! I brought George's cage into work with me and he hung out in my cubicle until his big moment. At lunch time I brought him to the meeting room... everyone loved him! George had a very good time, but was very tired from all the treats and pats he was getting.
