Day 5 – Off To Melbourne

We are off to Melbourne today.  We really won’t miss the Menzies hotel, and we wouldn’t stay there again.  Pros: good location, comfortable bed. Cons: so many, where to start.. The room never got cool, it was worn out, a little grungy in spots, the furniture had seen better days, and the bathroom was bizarre.  I don’t mean weird Australian plumbing bizarre, I have gotten used to the toilets. I mean bizarre bathtub shower with only half a shower door (the side closest to the shower head), weird step up tub that put the shower head at a height which required Matt to crouch to get under it.  And then there was the breakfast buffet where, three days running, the perfectly cooked scrambled eggs were totally ruined by eggshells.  WTH!  Is this an Aussie thing, is everything really more dangerous here? And then there was the concierge who was basically useless for arranging transport back to the airport and also seemed to have zero knowledge of where the oldest beer brewer in Sydney was located.  I’m not sure what a concierge is for if not those things.

We grabbed a taxi to the airport, sailed through check-in and security, (we didn’t have to take off our shoes, and the big bottle of sunblock in my bag was not a problem), and settled in to the AirPort wifi.  That is the other thing that sucked about the Menzies, there was basically no free wifi except for a half hour of what amounted to dial-up speeds in the lobby.

A couple hours later we were in Melbourne checking in to the Crown Promenade.  And what a room.  Pretty much everything the Menzies was not.  Modern, clean, no bizarre shower, and two walls of windows looking out on the cityscape.  We dumped our gear and headed out to explore.

We hoofed it around the downtown area with no real destination in mind.  I was getting peckish so I ducked down a small side street that looked like it had an Indian restaurant, but on closer inspection it was Thai, I didn’t want Thai, so I dived down the street a little farther and convinced Matt to try this restaurant called Dip In.  The premise being you order some dips and some bread and proceed to dip, which is what we did and it was delicious!

We wandered a bit more after that and then decided to hop on the free city circle tram which takes you around the city center and announces all the things you can do and see.  Unfortunately the tram only runs until 6 on Mondays, and we got on at 5ish, so when the tram stopped at 6 we were a half hours walk from the hotel.  Alrighty. So we hoofed it back.  Did I mention my feet hurt?

Tomorrow we see penguins.


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