we started the day with queen victoria market. checked out of our melb city hotel. collected xiao lan and drove our way to queen v.

queen v! the more exciting city day.
it felt like another chatuchak, without the heat that is.

There was a rather clear distinction. Most of the souvenir and clothes stall were manned by asians while the seafood and diaries section were runned by australians or prob europeans. i won't know hahaa.

in the section where they sell cheese, olives, nougats and coffee. They had different dips for the olives and we got to taste it subsequently in sydney. It was farrrrr too salty for my liking.

Seafood!

and how can we miss out on this! highly recommended by loom. i stuffed down 3 doughnuts by myself, including loom's share, and got a cup of coffee to wash it down. impressed by myself. even pork almost exploded.

I LOVE THIS!

and we hit the road once again to phillips island. PENGUINS.
finally got a pair of sunnies each else we would either get cataract or go blind in aussie.


checked in at the cosy pelicans motel at san remo, which is a bridge away from phillips island. apparantly it was privately run by a family who lived just next door. a very well-equipped motel!
the owner (i believe) was very helpful. she equipped us with all the maps and info we need for phillips island. she even prepared blankets for us to bring to the island while we wait for the penguins coz it will be very cold. how sweet of her.
since we were still early, we drove 20 mins to Cowes on phillips island, the only town on the island.



had an early dinner at the faaaaaaat seagull.

at the pier nearby.

drove to the nobbies which was 5 mins away from the penguin parade.

the seal rock. it was said that you can spot seals on the rock. either we were there at the wrong season of the year, or we didnt try hard enough, we didnt manage to see any.

the ultra scenic boardwalk. i miss this place!

this was damn apt - relax, you are on island time now.


rocks!
we chilled (again) at the cafe at the nobbies centre before going over to the penguin parade.

sadly, no photography was allowed.

i secretly took pictures of the penguins home before they came back. hehe.

instead of spotting penguins, i spotted a wallaby! hahaha.
some penguins were already home. probably they didnt go out to sea that day. hahaa.
anyway we all sat by the ocean, waiting for the penguins to come home. we were so glad that we had the blankets with us because it was so warm and cosy to snuggle inside while waiting.
everyone was damn excited when we first spotted the 1st grp of arriving penguins, little penguins to be specific, which are the smallest among the penguin species. they took 10 million years to finally get out of the water because they kept jumping back into the water after a few steps on land. they needed a brave leader to finally lead them out of the water totally. and u see them waddle across the sands and into the grass. sooo cute. we went on to the boardwalk to see them waddle waddle waddle to i-dunno-where. they just kept walking and walking and so we followed hahaha. some went home along the way while some just continued walking. we even found 1 penguin at the carpark when we left hahaha. sooo freaking cute. i must say we were really quite lucky coz there were alot of penguins =))
learning point of the day: penguins are a very talkative lot. they chirped/bitched/squeaked non-stop. hahaha.
we ended the day with cup noodles (for the 2nd time) as supper. hahaha.