Beer Garden Trumps Tennis

Wednesday, January 21, 2015

Today is mainly a travel day. We are super hungover, but we figured if you are going to spend the entire day feeling like shit, it might as well be on a travel day. When you have to fly. Flawless logic. We have a morning flight from Cairns to Melbourne with Jetstar. Jetstar blows – and not just because the seats are tiny, but also because their pilots haven’t quiet mastered the take-off and landing aspects of their job. Minor details. We befriend a 15 year old boy in the seat next to us who looks like he is about 10. He thinks we are hilarious and pathetic and will probably tell his friends all about the ridiculous drunk chicks he hung out with on the plane. Take off is rough, but we manage well enough. After about three hours or so we begin our descent. Our descent into a fucking wind tunnel apparently. Stina screamed, and there may have been tears. People were staring. We held hands. Probably since we hadn’t been able to cuddle the past few nights. And finally we had arrived in Melbourne! I was about 3pm by the time we got to our hostel. Our room is a box. With no air conditioning. Just a fan. But we do have free wifi and it actually works in our room! You guys will probably have noticed an increase in text messages from us because we are spoiled for i message capabilities. We went for a walk on the esplanade and got some Mexican food. I am assuming this is pretty obvious to you all, but it was an early night for us.

Thursday, January 22, 2015

Today is a very exciting day. Not only is it Jorgie’s 30th birthday (hehe), it’s Aussie Open day!! Yes, we are going to be real, non-backpackers for the day and we could not be happier about it. And old client of mine hooked it up with some free tickets, which is primarily why we scheduled Melbourne for the end of our trip. We head off to the open around 10am, which is when they open the gates. We are eager beavers. It took about 30 seconds for us to find the beer garden – which was empty at that point.

We swore to return, got some champagne and headed to our seats where we watched some Sweedish chick get her ass kicked by a Russian chick. Is it becoming clear how much Tennis I watch?

About halfway through the match the inevitable outcome was glaringly obvious, so we left to check out the situation in the beer garden. The situation inspired lots of hope for the rest of the day.

I think you can all see where this day is headed. This beer garden was HUGE, the Aussie men were plentiful, and the women were not. Nothing I love more than shooting fish in a barrel. And day drinking. After trying out a few different groups of dudes we found some funny ones and decided to grace them with our continued presence.

Drinking with Stina and I is like winning the lottery; luck needs to be on your side and you just wait for your number to be called. And wouldn’t you know it, they were a stag party (Stag party = bachelor party here). I don’t know how it’s taken us almost two months to find a stag party, but we all knew it would happen eventually. We spent the next few hours getting sloshed. The plan was to go back in to watch Serena play…but they had a big screen in the beer garden. Soooooo. What’s the difference really? And do you have any idea how quiet you have to be when you are watching a tennis match? It’s like being muzzled. I could barely handle it sober. I can’t be held down like that, people.

We did go back in at some point to watch Djokovic (#1 in the world) play. He looked like an ass hole to me. I rooted for the underdog, who I think was adorable, but I stopped wearing my contacts about a week into the trip so I can’t really see shit. He got is ass kicked, off course. Ever the consistent spectators, we headed back to the beer garden once it was clear where that match was headed.

Where we remained until about 8pm. We had gotten passes to the Heineken VIP area earlier in the morning. Some skanks were walking around handing out passes to attractive men only. They were like a snooty, uptight version of Budweiser girls. Stina went up to one and asked if she could get some passes. The chick literally made Stina walk her over to where I was sitting so she could make sure I wasn’t a beast before grudgingly handing over the passes. It was like Regina George was checking to make sure I wasn’t wearing sweat pants. We went up to the VIP area, but it was awkwardly uptight. The room was filled with guys with too much product in their hair and chick in heels. Heels – at a fucking tennis tournament! Not exactly our crowd. We drank our free beers but looked longingly out at the middle class where all the fun was being had – and let’s be honest, where we belong. We spotted our stag party boys and high tailed it back down to party with the lay people.

The rest of the afternoon was spent as you can imagine. Getting totally shit faced. Eating ridiculously fatty foods. Like gravy fries. How can something as simple as gravy over fries be so insanely delicious? My sister-in-law is probably drooling as she reads this.

As you should all be. A bunch of the single dudes invited us to go to dinner with them. We were promptly uninvited by the married guy in the group. Married people ruin all the fun. Did you take a vow of marriage, or a vow of boring? Because you could have fooled me.

A slight tiff ensued amongst the single and married men, but we parted with them promising to meet up later at the bar below our hostel, which apparently they frequent quite regularly.

When we got home it was getting dark. I was confused because I thought it was about 4pm. It was 8:30pm. Time flies when you are keeping pace with a stag party. An Aussie stag party. We got some kebabs (the Aussie version of a gyro) and I promptly passed the fuck out. I awoke around 11:30pm a few hours later to a bunch of facebook messages from the stag boys, who were downstairs at the bar, as promised. But those who have been day drinking with me (which is probably all of you) know that once I am down, I am not getting back up. It’s like when someone has a concussion. If you let them fall asleep, it’s over. I think 10 hours of drinking is my limit these days. Old age is a bitch. Stina was beyond thrilled that I did not make her go out, as she was equally down for the count. Travel soul mates strike again.

Tomorrow we spend 14 hours on a bus to see the Great Ocean Road!! Should be thrilling. Ok it will be boring, but there will be bus people to talk shit about and lots of cool pics.