We had an early morning flight to Melbourne, picked up a car and drove straight to Torquay (pronounced Tor-key). Torquay is about an hour and a half drive from Melbourne and the official beginnging of the famous Great Ocean Road. We wanted to come to Torquay because it is a popular place for surf. In fact, just a couple of weeks ago, at Bells Beach, the Rip Curl Pro was held.
The first adventure of the day was driving the car. Not only do they drive on the wrong side of the road here, the driver’s seat is like a mailman’s, on the right, instead of the left. The big dilemma was, does Kevin drive, with an expired license (yay for birthday’s abroad!) or does Kelli drive, the worst navigator in the world. All fingers point to me, but Kevin drove.
He got us there just fine and once in Torquay, we hit Bells Beach. The weather was not rainy but it was definitely not warm…it is their fall. The surfers were in wetsuits and told us the water was warmer than the air. It still didn’t make me want to get in. Plus the waves at Bells were a little big for us and the waves at the other beaches weren’t worth getting wet for. Sooo, we went shopping! Our Lonely Planet book told us everyone loves to hit up the surf outlets (like Rip Curl, Quicksilver, Roxy, etc). When we got there though, it was like TJ Maxx on steroids with piles of clothes everywhere. No thanks.
Bells Beach!
We explored the small beach town a little more and called it a night. When it’s dark by 6pm and everything closes about that time, there’s only so much you can do. It was nice though, we grabbed a take-away pizza and cozied up in our cute little B&B for dinner and a movie.
Cake & Ice Creams 