An Irish Visitor

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Jo’s friend, Jo (yes another one) arrived late on Thursday night, and as she was only in Melbourne for the 1 night before continuing her travels, she stayed at our place so they could have a chance to catch up.

Thursday evening was spent catching up and gossiping over a glass of wine, but as Jo only arrived at 10pm it wasn’t long before we all needed to catch some zzz’s. The next morning Jo re-packed her backpack, which took a couple of attempts. And we then caught the tram into the city where Jo found a locker in the bus station to store her backpack for the day.

We had a wander around town as we tried to give Jo a whistle stop tour of Melbourne. We stopped by 333 Collins St again where Jo worked her Irish charm on the security guard who gave us an ‘insiders view’ of the roof of the original building. The guard took us up in a very grand lift and through the back corridors of the building out onto a balcony in the centre of the building which overlooked the roof of the original building which has been entombed in the more modern building built around it. The guard told us that the roof of the original building was once used to watch out for fires as it was one of the tallest in Melbourne, and it had a beacon on top to show the ships where to drop their passengers as the Yarra once ran much closer to the centre of the CBD.

From here we showed Jo some more of the quirky building in Melbourne as we made our way down to the laneways which are filled with cafes. We stopped at one of these cafes for lunch before making our way down to Federation Square where we managed to blag a free dashboard sun protector for Jo’s upcoming campervan trip. We walked down from Federation Square to the Yarra where we wandered along the shady banks and stopped for a rest as it was 34 degrees!

It was then time for Jo to collect her backpack and meet up with her fellow travellers to carry on her trip. WiWe then caught the tram back to Richmond and headed down to our neighbour – Dan Murphy’s liquor store to enjoy their weekly wine tasting. We’re starting to make friends with the locals who also seem to make the weekly wine tasting a part of the regular schedule and picked up lots of tips from them on places to go and things to see later in our trip. Once we had worked our way through the wines and beers on offer, it was time to pick up some dinner so it was on to Coles where we picked up some groceries – including a roasted chicken which we had later with chips and salad – which was a luxury for us after having been trying to live on budget food for the past few weeks!

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