Here’s a few of our top picks for Brighton:

Cheap gym passes!

Gym –

Church Street Health & Fitness is located just a short stroll from our apartments, and has everything you need to keep up your fitness regime while away from home. We’ve even got a special deal for our guests to make use of this gym at a 60% discount off normal casual visit prices. But my suggestion for anyone who is staying in the area for a month or more, join this gym for only about $69 for a month. After your month expires, you don’t have to pay any more – unless you continue using the gym! The flexible memberships make it a perfect option for anyone who doesn’t know what they’re plans are in the near future.

A glimpse of the city beyond Dendy Beach

Beach –

Everyone talks about Brighton Beach, but my fave place to swim and soak up the sunshine is Dendy Beach. Dendy is the beach with all those famous Brighton Bathing Boxes. It’s a lot smaller than Brighton Beach, but the sand is softer, the water is a little more protected at the south end by the Green Point headland, and it’s quicker to walk there from our apartments! Just wander down Burrows St, then Dendy St and cross Beach Rd at the pedestrian crossing lights, and you’ll find a path that lands you right in the middle of Dendy Beach between the bathing boxes. Bliss!

Fish & Chips –

Fish Tank is the Local’s choice for fresh seafood! Any time of the day, any day of the week you will find this tiny shop/restaurant packed with people. This place is also quite forward thinking. How many fish n chip shops do you know with a website and mailing list? These guys run an amazing business and people keep coming back for more. The daily specials of fresh seafood are beautifully presented, and make it so hard to choose! Or if you’re not that confident at cooking your own seafood, they can do it for you. Their extensive menu includes healthy options including brown rice as a substitute to chips, and heaps of colourful salads – so you don’t have to feel guilty! I also love their burgers, which always hit the spot if I’m feeling a bit too ‘under the weather’ after a night out.

Breakfast -

For an organic, fresh & delicious breakfast that’s only a stone throw from Caroline Apartments you should head to White Rabbit Restaurant. The menu changes a lot, which keeps things interesting and seasonal. My recommendation is the huge Vego Breakkie! If you love avocado, tomato, eggs, potato, spinach etc, it’s a yummy feast to get you started for the day.

Tanning –

Tahiti on Church is the place to bronze up for the summer months or special occasions. The staff there are always so friendly & professional – even first timers feel relaxed! I’ve been told that if you try a spray tan once, you’ll definitely be back for more. So with that in mind, it’s a great idea to get one of their value packs and buy 2 spray tans at once, it saves you about $10 or $15. They also have tanning beds – not my thing, but I thought I should mention it.

Cinema -

You can’t go past Palace Dendy Brighton for a pleasure-filled cinematic experience. This is a relatively small cinema with 8 screens of varying sizes, with a liquor licence so you can sip a beer or wine while enjoying the film. I love going here because there are never any large groups of teenagers who just want to talk throughout films and annoy others (geez I sound old right about now!!!); and also because it’s only a couple of blocks away from Caroline Apartments – a quick stroll.

Have I missed anything that you might like to know about Brighton? Just ask if you want us to let you know about anything else…. I feel another blog post on ‘where to drink’ could be a goer, yes/no???

Corner of Male St & Church St

Thank you note

We love receiving feedback from our guests. We especially love receiving thank you letters/ cards/ presents at the end of someone’s stay. Here’s a lovely letter written by a family who stayed at our Brighton property for three months!

Dear Anna, Agatha, Imogene & Alison;

Thank you for all your help during our stay at Caroline Apartments. We have had a delightful time here and always appreciated the happy smiles, that nothing was too big a deal and especially Anna’s efforts when we were stuck without keys! We will be sure to recommend your apartments to our friends and family.

Best wishes, Roger, Jo, Amelie & Christien.

That’s just our latest note. Every week we receive more thank you notes from our guests – and we are guessing that’s why they keep coming back to us.

I personally enjoy seeing that our Team are obviously hitting the mark with customer service, so that’s a big pat on the back to the Brighton girls! If you are thinking of staying at either of our properties, you can be sure to have a dedicated Front Office and Housekeeping Team who will always go the extra mile to ensure you’re having a memorable stay.

Coming to Melbourne? Why stay anywhere else?

Recently Alison wrote a blog about her experience of moving out of our Brighton property and into her new home… why did she do this? To make room for me! Well not exactly, but we did have a re-shuffle which saw me moving into Ali’s old apartment, and taking over as Resident Manager!! (Yay!)

Not only did I have to prepare to move into my new apartment, I had to move twice! Just before I moved into my very own little apartment, my family and I moved into our brand new house, just around the corner. If anyone read my last blog, I only just came back from a trip overseas in June, and in a number of days, had to pack up my entire life to move into a house where I would only live  for another 3 weeks.  I have moved many, many times in my life, with my family being in the property business, but this was just too much, one move with my stressed-out family, and one by myself with  all of my own junk.

The final move went smoothly, with only a one major hiccup which saw me without a couch for about a week!

My advice to movers: arrange your furniture deliveries carefully and write them down!!

Now over a month has passed, and I am more or less settled in my new place, and in my new role as Resident Manager! I’m currently sitting in my new home, which is a blessing and a new challenge for me and I’m looking forward to what it will bring, as Caroline Apartments is growing and changing!! See our latest blog to hear about what is happening at South Yarra, and keep watching this space for new things at Brighton, as well as competitions and great deals!

Some big changes have happened in the last week at Caroline Serviced Apartments. They’ve finally kicked me out of my apartment at the Brighton property!

How can one room look like this.....

Did they really kick me out? Ha ha, luckily no. But that didn’t make the moving process any easier. It’s right up there as one of the most arduous tasks in life. Some people have the unfortunate(?) pleasure of going through this several times.  Don’t get me wrong, it can be exciting finding and planning for that new place to move to, I was so pumped to have found the perfect new pad in the best location – it just never makes the process of packing and unpacking any easier.

I’ve lived in about 15 different homes over my life, and thought that my hoarding days were well behind me after living like a backpacker in the UK for a few years… but this recent move has taught me a few things:

1. Never underestimate the value of regular spring cleaning
2. In the weeks leading up to the move, give some areas of your current place a good clean. It’ll make it so much easier once you’ve moved out
3. If you haven’t looked at or used an item in more than 6 months, then there’s probably no need to keep it. Why not have a garage sale???? Be ruthless here!
4. Keep nic-nacs to a minimum, they take a fair bit of time & effort to wrap and pack (not to mention the regular dusting when they’re on display)
5. Pack smaller size boxes so they’re easier to carry
6. Label all boxes with the contents, so you know exactly which room to put it in at the other end
7. Arrange items to give to charity if you no longer want them – best to sort this stuff out before the big move (less to carry – refer to point 3 and consider that Garage Sale or eBay account)
8. Organise your utility connections at least a week before you move, and don’t forget your internet connection (like I did)
9. Don’t forget to change your address with all the companies you use, or at least create a mail re-direction service with the post office
10. And last, but not least, never EVER agree to moving yourself with only the help of your hubby/wife.  I would highly recommend using a removalist company to do the hard stuff for you! *Insert big grumble here* after my tearful plea to the hubby that I couldn’t possibly instantly “get stronger” in order to get our seemingly 200kg latex mattress into the moving van!

Then become a mess like this? Try moving house sometime...

So finally, at Caroline Serviced Apartments in Brighton it’s been ‘out with the old’ and … ‘in with the new’. Anna is now in the process of moving into my old apartment and taking over as the Resident Manager. A new and exciting chapter is unfolding….

07:00 AM - **Yawn** Alarm goes off. Roll over. A hearty breakfast of 2 Weetbix, honey and banana..mmm…Yum!

07:30 AM – Stroll to work at a leisurely pace, breathe in that morning freshness!

07:42 AM – Get distracted by snail that has made a silver, slimy path across the pavement.

07:55 AM – Arrive at work. Use my super duper all access electronic swipe card to access the building (that’s right people, ALL ACCESS!) at Caroline Serviced Apartments in Brighton.

08:35 AM – Farewell guests who have come down to Reception to drop off their keys. They leave us a rave review which I later put up on our Facebook, Twitter and other corresponding web pages to share the love! Getting involved in social media platforms is a really important part of our job. Websites, such as these are useful tools in the marketing and branding of the company. It also opens up more communication channels between ourselves and our guests and gives us the opportunity to gain feedback on a personal level. Current, future and previous guests also surf our web pages regularly for information on what’s going on around Melbourne, special deals and reviews, so it is important to keep these up to date in order to be able to provide accurate and useful information to our followers.

10:00 AM – An ‘in-house’ guest (notice the Front Office lingo? ‘in-house’ means someone who is currently staying with us) comes to Reception after being out for a business breakfast, which I helped her organise. Our Front Office Team work closely with the local businesses, as we believe in promoting the Brighton area. By doing this we are able to provide our guests with added value, like meal or drink vouchers, along with helping out our restaurant neighbours with a bit of extra business! Our lovely guest has an extra coffee in hand as a thankyou for me!! (Just in time too, I forgot to have mine this morning!) .

10:20 AM – We have received an internet booking from one of our websites! I pop in the booking and send through the confirmation details to the guest. The booking has come from one our third party websites (such as wotif.com or expedia.com). We constantly have to check out inventory and listings on all websites to make sure it’s up to date – especially since we receive bookings from so many different channels (phone, walk-in, email as well as on-line 3^rd party websites). Constant research is needed as we need to be aware of competitors’ rates and availabilities. We have to ensure that Caroline Serviced Apartments are the accommodation YOU would click on, rather than say, a hotel down the road.

10:45 AM – I do a little research about Melbourne. It’s important that we know what is going on around our own city so we can make suggestions to guests about where to eat and play! We accommodate a variety of guests (international, interstate and local) and we need to be able to assist them with a variety of things! The other day, I compiled a list of electrical & whitegoods retailers for an international guest who was a bit lost as to where to start setting up their new home in Melbourne. It really made me realise how many ‘little’ things we take for granted when moving to a new city… Ali has already done a blog post on this topic: ‘Relocations are Big Business’.

11:15 AM – Receive a phone call from a lovely lady enquiring about our apartments. The Brighton property is full for the dates that she requested so I must double check with the South Yarra property to see if we can accommodate her. Working closely with both properties to maximise our sales is essential to our company. South Yarra has the availability, and after confirming that the lady wouldn’t mind staying there, I forward her details onto our fabulous Assistant Manager at South Yarra, Alex.

11:25 AM – I chat to one of our clients at a Relocation Company who is looking to place an executive from a large banking group in our apartments for a minimum of 3 months. It’s such a last minute booking too – she wants to book him in from this weekend! It takes me a while to juggle some of our upcoming bookings around to make some room for this long booking, but I manage to do it (much to the Relocation Agents’ relief)! I find out that the guest will be arriving at midnight on Friday, so I offer to organise a Pantry shop (a little grocery shopping) for his family, to help them get settled after a long flight from Europe. We understand that it’s difficult traveling with children, and to have a feeling of homeliness when you arrive is so important. At least it might be nice to arrive and have some toast and a hot chocolate before putting the excited/tired kids to bed.

12:00 PM – Alison arrives, 2 juices in hand (they are squeezed fresh at the green-grocer on Church Street and very hard to resist!). We deliberate about current in-house and future guests. Communication between all the Front Of House staff is really important. It means that each staff member is on the same level, and we can therefore help each guest accordingly.

12:20 PM - Ali sends me down the road to do a bit of a shopping for office supplies (which of course include office Teddy Bear chocolate covered biscuits!)

1:00 PM – Mr. XXX arrives and would like to check in. I’m a little bit nervous, he is the CEO of a major Australian Company and I really want to impress him. Working with high profile guests isn’t as scary as I thought it would be. We have guests come to stay that are the big players within large co-operations like CEO’s and Managing Directors, and we try our best to impress them. It’s important to keep all of our guests extra happy, some of them stay here for many months while they are working on projects in Melbourne. If they have an enjoyable stay with us they are bound to come back and to forward our details onto their own employees and clients, further exposing our company name (and friendly staff!). It’s really lovely when one of these high profile guests is appreciative of the extra efforts you have gone to in order to make their stay more comfortable. It’s the little things that count, and it’s the little things that we remember!

1:40 PM – I just got a booking for a wedding day! I love it when we have wedding guests stay with us. The bridezillas that run around the apartments are so much fun! And some of them come up with unusual requests…such as forwarning us that deliveries of champagne & beer will be arriving before they check in, and could we please fill the fridge with it?

3:00 PM – Aaaah another little highlight in the day. A couple of the lights in Reception have stopped working, so our favourite electrician, Pete has arrived to change the transformers for us. A certain ‘nameless’ female Front Office staff member whispers to me that “Pete should climb up a ladder in Reception everyday”. There’s also a couple of light-switch repairs he needs to attend to in the guest rooms, so we have to make arrangements with the guests to have access to their apartments. That’s one thing I really didn’t expect when I started working here, we have so many little maintenance things that we have to attend to. Our guests or housekeepers report a problem to the Front Office and it’s up to us to figure out how to fix the problem ourselves, or call out an expert. I’ve learnt so much about TVs, air-conditioners, dishwashers and DVD players in my first few months here!!!

4.00 PM – My day comes to an end. I bid farewell to Ali, and tell her I’ll see her tonight at the Social-Media function down at ‘The Social’ on Chapel St. The monthly Tweet Up Mellers event is a great opportunity for us to have some casual drinks, and network with other Social Media savvy business people.

Between the above times, I’ve kept busy updating staff time sheets, printing out reports so the housekeepers know how busy the next day will be, answering many phone calls with bookings, setting up appointments for people to view our apartments for future bookings, I tidied the office, and even managed to find some time for lunch! Hopefully you’ve got some idea of what our day is like in the Front Office of Caroline Serviced Apartments… we don’t just sit at the desk looking pretty!

This post is not so much about the ‘why’ people relocate, it is about the varied ‘little things’ that people may (or may not) consider when they arrive in a new country. At Caroline Serviced Apartments we get to meet so many guests who have decided to move to Melbourne from overseas. We have helped people set their new life up, and don’t think any question is too silly. We understand how hard and stressful it can be to move, so we do our best to help.

Typical questions that we get asked are:

• How much do local calls cost?
• Which mobile phone supplier is better than the others?
• Is the tap water ok to drink?
• Will my DVDs work in Australian DVD players?
• Is it safe at night in this area?
• Do we need to sort recycling into different bins?

Things that people take for-granted about moving:

• Bank accounts
• Australia has pretty strict quarantine rules for pets – it’ll be a minimum of 30 days  before you can welcome your pet into your new home
• School locations compared to where you want (or can afford) to live
• Mobile phone accessibility / set-up
• Where to buy furniture? Or White goods?
• Is it best to rent something fully-furnished or buy/rent furniture?
• Learning to drive on the opposite side of the road
• Learning new/different road rules
• Different currency and getting used to exchange rates
• When are the public holidays? When is it Daylight Savings time?
• Getting a Tax File Number
• Where can we buy baby items?
• Gyms – where and who are the best?
• The shipment of household items may have an arrival date, but sometimes it sits in customs for weeks! Don’t forget this when planning your accommodation!
• Dentists, doctors, beauticians, hairdressers, masseuse, nail technicians, plastic surgeons

I often have to write references to real estate agents about guests who have no permanent address, and are trying to find somewhere to live, or even if they want to join the local library to get access to free internet to help with their research on places to live.

We also work closely with a number of relocation companies who help families get settled in Melbourne. Sometimes our guests are relocating themselves on their own. Sometimes their Company is covering the costs of their relocation.  Relocations are a huge industry and we are proudly part of it.

What do you think is  (or would be) the biggest challenge for someone who is moving to Australia from overseas?