On Thursday morning, we got up at 6 to leave Melbourne and head down south to drive some of the Great Ocean Road.

Getting out of the city

Not only did we want to spend as much daylight as possible down on the coastline, but I also wanted to get out of Melbourne before the traffic got heavy for the day. There's one reason for this: the hook turn. Melbourne has invented the stupidest traffic system in the world which involves you making a right turn from the far left lane. It's kind of confusing to understand, but this post explains it pretty well.

Here's a car pulled into the "hook turn spot"

I can't over-emphasize how alarming it is to see the car beside you put on its right blinker and then get in the left lane, or if you're the one that has to swerve and then accelerate across all lanes of traffic to get on an intersecting street. Especially when you're not that much of an expert of driving on the wrong side of the road anyway. Rest assured that we mapped our circuitous route out of the city to consist of left turns only - we just spiraled out gracefully.

Morning coffee with the Aussies

Since it was such an early morning, we walked down a block to grab coffees. The only place open at the time was a pretty basic mom & pop shop that did basic breakfast & lunch food. We were the only people in the place at the time, but they said it would be a few minutes for our drinks and carried on making some sandwiches they were putting together. We thought this was a little weird (though, honestly, I don't think anything about Australian customer service will surprise Holly at this point), but it soon made sense. Three giant Aussie guys came in a couple minutes later to pick up their daily sandwiches. They seemed VERY excited to see a couple girls in their morning breakfast spot at 6:30 and promptly pulled up chairs so they could sit at the table where we were waiting. They asked us all about ourselves, and in turn, threw out really subtle statements like, "We've just been to the gym working out" and "If you give us your Facebook info, we can help you out with your traveling." It was sweet and hilarious.

After we escaped with our coffees, I wished I'd taken their pictures for the blog. We both agreed they probably would have really liked that!

The scenic route

We were both so happy to get out of Melbourne without having to make a hook turn or make Aussie boyfriends, we ended up leaving in the wrong direction. Just kidding - we just weren't paying attention and weren't familiar enough with the roads to figure it out.

So we ended up getting to see the sunrise in east Melbourne. Which really made up for a lot!