Melbourne

We rode into town in our white campa van and headed straight for the Apollo office. Amazingly, we negotiated the way quite easily. There was one wrong turn, but it was easily rectified with a stop at a petrol station. Within 30 minutes, we had returned the campa and were on our way to the Holiday Inn by the airport. That evening Craig had a night off from bbq duty. We merely took the elevator to the ground floor and sauntered into the restaurant. It was very strange not being in the campa van that night (no humming fridge to lull us to sleep), but Lynda was thrilled to have a toilet that was less than 500 metres from our bed. What luxury!

Our plan was to get up early on Saturday, head into town, see the city and fly to Perth on Sunday. Not a lot of time, but enough to give us a glimpse of what was there. So the next morning we walked over to the airport terminal and hopped onto the Skybus. Twenty minutes later we were in the heart of the CBD (Central Business District) looking for a reasonably priced place to eat. Notice that we do not say "cheap" place to eat. There are no $5.99 breakast specials in this country. Eating out is very expensive regardless of where you go. As we walked along, we passed a backpacker hotel. Since backpackers are notoriously thrifty, Craig popped in and asked for a recommendation. Sure enough there was a place right around the corner. "Great!" we thought. $32 later (hmm?) we had two coffees and two average sized meals. At least we didn't have to worry about leaving a tip.

It was very busy downtown that day, what with all the tourists, Christmas shoppers, and protestors. Yes, we happened to end up right in the middle of the Walk Against Warming as they congregated at the State Library. It was an impressive turnout with 40,000 participants. We didn't stick around for the march. Instead we jumped on the City Circle (free) tourist tram and saw some of the sites.

The best part of the day was taking another tram out to St. Kilda Beach to see our Whitsunday, sailing friends, Ben and Susie. While Susie was at a baby shower being held in her honour, Lynda and the guys hung out. Later that afternoon, we met up with Susie and went down to Elwood Park for a bbq with some of their friends. We had our bbq in the middle of Sunday's triathalon site, surrounded by gates, banners, and transition areas. Lynda was disappointed that we were leaving town and wouldn't be able to see it. We were there until well after dark when the mosquitoes drove everyone away.

Back on the Skybus. Back to the hotel. Back to the packing. We were sad to see the end of this phase of our trip, but excited about the prospects of seeing Jenna, Kristin, Peggy and Tom in Perth.

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