Day 8

Today was simply a travel day, as we left Alice Springs to fly the 3 hour or so flight down south to Melbourne. There is a 1 1/2 hour time change between Alice Springs and Melbourne, why the 1/2 hours I don’t know, but Melbourne is later.

We arrived at the airport, the largest we’ve seen since landing in Sydney last Friday, picked up our luggage and headed to the bus for about a 45 minute drive to our hotel in downtown Melbourne. Our hotel, The Rendezvous Grand Hotel, built back in the early 1900’s, looks just as you would have expected.

The temperature here in Melbourne was a bit cooler then we have had since arriving, but as we travel south down under it is like traveling north in the US, so colder temps are in our future. Even so, it is expected to climb to mid to upper 60’s tomorrow, so not terrible.

Dinner with group, as we didn’t get settled until after 6, then we decided to take a walk and see what we could tonight as our stay here is brief and busy. Our hotel is located just across the street from the Yarra River, so we walked under the train station and across the pedestrian bridge to what is know as Southbank. The entire river front was packed with people enjoying dinner, drinks, and just walking along the river enjoying the fresh night air. Mary and I both thought that the feel is much like that of Vancouver BC.

In addition to the people walking there were many many street performers playing instruments, singing, dancing, magic, and even a guy that lays on a bed of nails.

I took a few pictures of the night skyline including one of our hotel from the other side of the river. Tomorrow we do a city tour in the morning then off to Phillips Island to see the Penguins.

Till tomorrow