Marc & Nora ROUND THE WORLD 2005/2006 - Join us!

Nora writes>
On March 7 we got our relocation campervan for $1/day and were on the road again. For those who arent familiar with relocations it is a service that rental companies (mainly campervans) offer when they need one or their vehicles in another place quickly.

You can check out different websites or phone daily to enquire about any current relocations. In our case they needed a 2berth campervan with shower and toilet to be relocated from sydney to melbourne. Most of the times they offer you to relocate the van for something like $25 dollars/day (instead of a daily rental of 100 bucks or more) but sometimes when they are particularly desperate or in hurry they give you the relocation for $1.

You wont get plenty of time to cruise around but the deal is fair. they advertise a period of time which is usually a week or 10 days in which you can relocate the van but from the moment you rent it you have a limited time which was in our case 3 days.

for longer distances like perth to alice springs they usually give you 1 week or 10 days and also pay the fuel.

got the concept of it? good!

so we picked up our luxury home for the next days in sydney and decided to take full advantage of our 3 days allowance and headed to canberra, australia's capital.

Marc writes> Canberra is pretty much what everybody will tell you it is....boring! It is a really strange city to drive around in espectially considering that it is a national capital. There is almost no traffic for starters and then you realise that you can park almost anywhere you want with no charge and without even looking for a space...where is everyone?! In the late twenties when the Oz government were looking for a place to build there Capital it was decided that it was to be on 'almost' neutral ground in terms of its distance between Sydney and Melbourne. Well they decided on a small farming settlement of Canberra in SW NSW. What they essentially had was a blank canvas on which to build their city. You can really see that there was no limitations here and that it was a city built 'to plan'. The layout is so simple and it is almost impossibe to get lost. As for its attractions..well there aren't any really...just the buildings. We did visit most of them and they did look pretty impressive especially as they are almost all white and the sky was a perfect blue.

Nora writes>
In melbourne we had the chance to stay with a girl who marc worked with in perth. she and her boyfriend recently moved from perth to melbourne and were housesitting for a month - so we had a spacious bedroom in a huge house! and on our 2nd nite we had a huge barbie in the garden - NICE!

melbourne is a vibrant city - we both enjoyed our few days there. The commonwealth games were also just about to begin so the city was rather busy (even though half of the games' tickets havent been sold...) and lively.

Melbourne has a very cosmopolitan feel - it is a real art's town with lots to do and see and many exhibitions, shows, events going on all year round.

We had lovely weather and strolled through the city, explored melbourne's old prison where infamous NED KELLY was inprisoned.
We took the free city circle tram which passes all sights, the harbour and the olympic city (sydney was host of the olympic game in 2000 - you remember?)

One thing we both did not want to miss whilst being in Melbourne was to watch an authentic AUSSIE RULES FOOTBALL MATCH!

we both did not have a clue about the rules but we were soon told every detail by a friendly woman next to us who was heavily into aussie football (got a seasonal pass!)\

so here we were - sitting in massive telstra dome and watched fremantle playing against geelong. as we didnt know geelong (a suburb from melbourne apparently) we supported fremantle. (we been there - a cute little town just outside of perth, western australia)

unfortunately geelong won! it was so much fun as most of the game consists of fighting!!!

Melbourne is a great place! we both could really imagine living here for a while - we both liked it more than sydney as there is so much more to do and it just seems relaxed but vibrant at the same time (if you understand what i mean)