So after seemingly endless hours of flying, I was incredibly relieved to land in Melbourne. My first glance of the airport was indeed a glance as the cloud was extremely low, but I was soon off the plane and declaring my squeaky clean walking boots to be allowed out of custom!s. I was highly amused by the girl in front of me who'd felt the need to declare a cereal bar...
Next stop - SkyBus! At $30 return this was hardly a bargain, but, provided an easy route into the city centre with bonus free WiFi - not something I've come across before on a bus.
After disembarking from the SkyBus we found our hotel and gladly rolled up to reception, pleased with the prospect of a real bed later that evening. Instead we were met with the prospect that I am more stupid than I thought. Instead of booking for 8th-9th December I must have had a blonde moment and ended up booking for 8th-9th January! There must many things you don't want to discover after two days of travelling; I don't want to discover many more of these, but the fact that you have no room for the night is certainly one of them. The receptionist kindly helped my frame of mind by telling me that the only room left for tonight was the "most expensive room".
Some flapping later, we ended up with a better room, available immediately (rather than having to wait 5 hours to check-in) for the small excess sum of $20. *cue relieved face*
Plane clothes ditched we set out to explore Melbourne, starting by the lovely river. It wasn't long before we spotted some rowers - some turning rapidly to many. Along with the cyclists, runners and weight-pumpers, the rowers made me wonder whether anyone in Melbourne actually has a full time job - where do they find time to enjoy the river at 10am on a Monday? Jealous.
Our stomachs rumbling for lunch (plane breakfast had consisted of two crackers) we headed into the city. Melbourne is much more of a skyscraper city than I had anticipated. Its eclectic mix of building colours, shapes and sizes does indeed keep the eye entertained but made for far too many photos of buildings for my new "I shall not take more than 100 photos a day" mantra. It was probably a good thing therefore that we headed to Chinatown for lunch as the buildings here were unremarkable. The food however, was great! We spent a minimal amount in Juicy Bao, getting ourselves some of their special pan fried juicy Bao dumplings and some thick stir fried rice noodles. The Bao came with the warning "Caution: we have hot juicy filling in our Bao" which I misinterpreted to mean that there would be a nice level of spice to the pork filling. A tasty burst of sauce and a burned tongue later soon shattered this misconception, but I enjoyed my Bao nonetheless.
Walking off the Bao took us to the free city tram which in turn very very slowly took us to the harbour and federation square. Both newly developed sites, these were interesting to walk around, with extra added interest from oversized Christmas decorations. Day 3 is apparently too early for me to be used to experiencing 20 degree temperature simultaneously with festive decor, but I'm sure this will change.
No comments:
Post a Comment