7th to 8th March, 2016

Well, apologies, once again for the poor service on the old blog front. We are, in fact, currently in Auckland so yes, you are right, I have missed out on a whole city in Australia. So I hope this will make the difference – and good news, we have a hotel bedroom to show you and, wait for it, some more birds (see part 2)!!! Yeay!!

So, off we went from Brisbane and arrived safely in Melbourne. A taxi ride from the airport (there is no train, oddly) brought us to our hotel, the rather oddly named Art Series – (The Larwill Studio). To be honest, I have no idea why it is called that other than there is a whole art theme throughout the hotel. Why the brackets, I hear you ask in grammatical umbrage – I have no idea and I had to work hard not to let it irritate me (‘You are on holiday, John. It really doesn’t matter. It is probably just an ‘art’ thing. Let it go.’). It is housed rather incongruously in the same block as the Royal Children’s Hospital, but was perfectly ok and quite well situated near the trams in North Melbourne. Note the artwork on the walls – and no, I don’t know why Val is hiding in the corner of the room…

We had a nice walk to Errol Street that evening to find something to eat (pizza!!!). The next day we had a day of sightseeing ahead of us and set off to our first spot, the Queen Victoria Market. Val loves a good market and this one was pretty impressive. The aim was then to catch the round-Melbourne hop-on-hop-off (hoho) bus, which we duly did which took us to our next point of interest, the newly rejuvenated Docklands area – another shopping precinct largely. So Val did what she does best and I set off to take a few photos. I should add that the temperature when we set out had been about 22 degrees and was now up around the 30 mark and rising. Note the statue of Dame Edna, below and the rather strange collection of crouching ‘red’ men.

Being quite warm, we were glad to get on the air-conditioned bus for the rest of the tour. A few iconic spectacles included the Melbourne Cricket Ground (note the statue of Dennis Lillee), the Bourke Street Royal Arcade, Victoria Art Gallery, the Arch of Remembrance, the tram, the wide streets and mix of old and new buildings. Melbourne was founded in the 1830s and laid out in a grid style with very wide streets (it was considered healthier). The only bad thing is that there is an intersection every few hundred yards and the tram stops at every one of them, as does the traffic! It is very pleasant though with quite a lot of the old terraced one storey buildings with their remarkable lattice ironwork. Tiny buildings though. We did have one more stop in the Central Business District (the old grid part of the city) and had a quick walk along the Chinatown part of town.

The temperature had now reached about 35 degrees, so it was a delight to get back to the cool of our hotel, especially after all the walking. And we had a treat in store for the evening as Don Whyte, an old friend who now lives in France, emailed to say that he had discovered by way of THIS BLOG (!) that we were in Melbourne and were we free for a drink. He was in the city on a work trip. So we managed to have a few drinks. Don is turning into the world’s slowest stalker as about 8 to 10 years ago he happened to be in Brussels at the same time as us. A few evening scenes from Melbourne too – note that the temperature had now reached a remarkable 40 degrees with a hot wind that did nothing to cool us down. Certainly the hottest evening I have ever experienced (well, weather-wise, at least).

OK, time to get this posted and to start on part 2.