Today began as a typical day in Melbourne, Aussie but I can't exactly tell you about the day in Mel. since we were on the road for most of the day. So, we went on this Philip Island Tour with the company 'Go West' (and no, we didn't travel with the company, the company just supplied us with the bus) and our tour guide was a young lady named Katie. Katie was nice enough and always supplied us with lollies (aka candy), information, and jokes.
Now, on with the story. Our first stop was a town east of Mel. called Koo-ee-rup or something spelled like that. This place is a bit on the country side. It's a nice place to visit but I don't think I would love to live there because it seems like a place where everyone knows everything about everyone else. Katie gave us approximately thirty minutes to eat our lunch and use the bathroom. With this, my family and I walked to this bakery where we bought two beef, bacon and cheese meat pie, a dog-in-a-hole (which is basically a hot dog in a bun with ketchup, cheese, and raw/grilled onions), and a egg and something pie. The meat pies were absolutely delish while the egg one was a bit.... icky. While the dog-in-a-hole was quite tasty, it was also quite fatty (the evidence was on the bag. There was practically a gallon of grease on it!!) so I wouldn't recommend this on a daily basis. We also bought a chocolate milkshake. Though I was a bit reluctant to drink this strange concoction because I wanted the caramel one, I was happy when I did because it tasted better then the In-N-Out one and if your from the west coast, then you should know how good it tasted!
Once 12:30 rolled around, my family scurried to the bus with one minute to spare. After another thirty minutes passed on the bus, we reached our next destination, Panny's chocolate factory which is on Philip Island. In this factory, it explained the process to make chocolate, had interactive (chocolate) games for the kids, and some chocolate trivia for bored adults. Though these additions were lovely, I really wished they showed the actual factory. There was only one window where it showed the workers and in this case, the workers were machines. :( I also wished they gave more free samples, as a kid, you can never have enough free samples! In the end, I bought a milk ginger chocolate bar that I have yet to try.
Our next stop was a Koala Conservation Centre. I loved this place because you could be like inches away from a cute, sleeping Koala (emphasis on the cute!). I do have one regret about this place. In the northern part of Aussie, the Koalas were supposedly nicer and allowed you to pet and hold them but in the southern part, you can't do anything but watch them. :(
The last stop before the infamous penguin parade was a winery where we tasted wine and cheese. While the adults drank wine, my brother and I went for the harder stuff, Cocacola! Tee-hee. Anyways, the cheese was great but they didn't have quite enough. It's like the winery was only built for adults (well usually wineries are built for adults) and underaged people weren't even given a second thought.
Finally, we arrived at the penguin parade. Don't get me wrong, the penguins were cute and all but the place was definitely overpriced. I mean, two bobby pins with the smallest penguin charm on them was......... $8.50!!! Who would pay for that???? Also, I wished they wouldn't get peoples hope so low because they kept saying, "Don't expect too much, the numbers of penguins are decreasing." But there were actually tons of them which I didn't get to see since I went chasing after the first wave, thinking that those were the only penguins we were going to see.
All in all, the tour was amazing. You get to see cute penguins, wallabies, and koalas and you get a taste of great wine, cheese, and chocolate. So, I would recommend this tour to other people. Rating: 7
