{The Great Ocean Road}

Connor came up with a list of things to do in Melbourne months ago, and he listed The Great Ocean Road as an all day activity. I said it sounded great, the idea of a fun road trip with "spectacular views" seemed like a cool Australian way to spend the day. 

I met him at Flinder's Street Station at 8 and started on our hour long trip to Geelong (pronounced Juh-lung) via train. 
Connor's super sweet mom picked us up at the station, and before I knew it, we were pulling out of his driveway in their blue Hyundai (pronounced Hee-un-day). 
I was constantly telling poor Connor to pull over so I could take pictures of the beautiful views. 

Eventually, we started mastering the balance-the-camera-on-the-car-roof selfies so we could be in the pretty pictures together. 

We started joking that the Hyundai looked like it was right out of a car ad, with the beautiful ocean in the background and the dirt road under the tires.

Evantually we got hungry, so we stopped in the posh town of Lorne (which I thought was actually called Loin because of the Aussi pronunciation). Hello best sandwich of my life! While it was an uncomfortable $10, it was the most delicious avacado, turkey, bacon, pesto sandwich I've ever eaten. 

We got back on the road and eventually turned off the GOR and drove up the Otway into the rainforests just above the road. 

It was such a drastic difference between the forest and the ocean! We had planned to do a large hike once we got up in the trees, but all my picture taking had put us behind schedule and we chose to hike to the Hopetoun Falls waterfall instead. We expected it to take us an hour to hike, but we got there and realized that hour estimate was for a little old granny with a cane, not a guy with impossibly long legs and a girl who's used to speed walking. We were down to the base of the waterfall in 10 minutes, and back to the top in 15. It was beautiful anyway.

We drove back to Geelong feeling pleased with our day when Connor got a text from his mum (can we call mothers mum here? Can I start that trend?) inviting us to stay for mushroom pasta. I, being a sucker for mushrooms, accepted the invitation without a second thought.

Boy am I glad we stayed for dinner! The food was delicious, and Connor's parents and little sister were so welcoming and kind! They let me play with a 100 dollar bill, people... that's trust right there. Eventually we had cleaned our bowls, the sun had decided to leave, and our train departure was looming, so we were driven back to the train station, and we headed back to Melbourne. 

We parted ways at the station, and I'm hoping I'll get to see Connor again before my flight to Brisbane on Thursday.