hi Kite,
We stayed at goodearthe hotel before. It is quite ok. A basic hotel. The apartments are quite ok, come with cooking facilties including oven. It is at a corner of the city. It is about a 15 mins walk to the shopping belt itself. However, it does not have parking for cars. You have to park along the road side. If you are there during weekdays, parking will become a problem. It is expensive and difficult to find parking. It is only free from 5pm to 7 am.
hi alina,
Perth City - Albany, the trip down will take around 5 hours, if you make stops for lunch. Maybe it will take 7 hours. There is not much things to see in the trip down.
Albany -> Margaret river
You can do wadpole, denmark, pemberton. You can do a farm stay at Pemberton. There is a lighthouse at augusta
Margaret river -> City
You can also do a farmstay in one of the towns near margaret river. There are quite a lot of things to do in margaret river, wineyards, chocolate and cheese factory. Eagle heritage place, cave walk.
a) Busselton -> walk 1 km to see the observatory at the end
b) bunbary -> Dolphins before 11 am
c) mundurah, harvey -> There are quite of nature stuff, farm. There is this pie place near mundurah which is famous. It slip my mind now.
d) Rockingham -> Take a tour out to visit the dolphins, or do the seal tour You can also visit the macademica nut place near rockingham
Perth City
If you have booked not anything in perth. You may want to consider this svc apartment which we stayed last year. It comes with a car port.
http://www.staywest.com.au/. 110 dollars if less than 5 day, but if you stay longer, it is cheaper. We stayed in the hensman road one. The apartments are quite nice, comes with full cooking facilities, washing machine etc.
a) I would suggest skipping swan valley, it is a mini margaret river. If you really want to do it. It whole route should take no more than half a day.
b) Since only 2 of u, you may consider driving up to north. There are places like lancelin, gingin(bee farm, sci observatory), Yanchep national park. The coast line is quite spectacular. The above can be done in 1 day. You can also consider avon valley, york.
c) Cashervam Wildlife, is a good place to go. (half day will do)
d) I love fremantle. Fremantle is good to go during a weekend, there are busking and weekend markets. However, I do love browsing the shops. I like fremantle better than the city itself.
e) In the City itself.
- Northbridge. Alot of asian stuff. There is a grocer which sells alot of nuts stuff,etc. It is at the corner of northbridge opposite of the Railway. You can get cheap and good almonds, macademia nuts, half the price of you what you get in sg.
- The shopping belt. Parking is expensive, most stuff are relatively expensive.
- Harbourtown. Factory outlet. You can get your baby stuff at pumpkin patch and cotton on kids.
- Museum. The museum at perth city is really good. It is worth going.
- Cannington Vale. There is a wholesale market every Sat morning. You can get apples, strawberries, mushrooms, beef, lamb and seafood at a very cheap rate. However, you need to buy in cartons. You need to be there by 7:30 am.
If you need to get a rental car, I would recommend M2000. You can collect and return at the airport. It has good rates even after factoring reduced damages.
http://www.m2000car.com.au/.