Blogs from Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, Oceania

This morning, we packed our bags for the last time on this holiday. Both down to our last pair of clean undies we need to get home to do a big wash! We had a quick breakfast with Meredith then (mainly) Bernie started the task of re-packing the truck for the final leg of the journey. The truck had been parked out on Carrington Street overnight, but Bernie managed to move it into the lane adjacent to the apartment this morning which meant we didn’t have quite so far to ferry the luggage to the truck. Aiming to be on our way by 8.00am we managed to pull out onto Carrington Street at 8.30am. We negotiated our way out of the city in moderate peak hour traffic. At the last set of lights before the start ... read more

Tour Day 87 – On 04 JAN, my final full day in Melbourne, I took a walk to the Queen Victoria Market. This blog presents some of the miscellaneous pictures I took during my stay and offers some pictures of the market.... read more

Tour Days 82-87 – Melbourne, Australia –To keep the number of photos per blog entry manageable, I decided to separate out the photos of the Australian countryside which I took in the 11-hour, 50-minute daytime train trip (0740 to 1830) from Sydney to Melbourne, Australia. Somewhere along the line I had the impression that the train route went through the Blue Mountains. That was a major reason I wasn’t chomping at the bit to take a day trip to the mountains while I was in Sydney. The train route does not go through the mountains but through open range (where I got a glimpse of my first wild kangaroo) and bountiful farm lands. My seating companion was a semi-retired 60ish gentleman from Sydney who was born in Istanbul, Turkey but felt a calling to move to ... read more

NOTE: We are home. This is the final entry for this holiday. Good to his word, the captain had us touching down in Dubai just after midnight. With our flight to Melbourne at 2.20pm local time we had just over two hours until we were due to be in the air again for the longer leg of our journey home. With boarding commencing an hour before flight time we really only had an hour to stretch our legs. Fortunately, we didn’t have to change terminals at Dubai, just walk from one gate to another. It’s so much easier to fly in and out of the same terminal and not have to take the train between terminals. We decided to walk to our departure gate before sitting down. It’s much easier to be where you need to ... read more

A journey of 1000 miles begins with a single step... No it doesn't! The quote is often attributed to Confucius, probably because it's the only wise Chinese scholar most people know, but apparently it is not really from him. Not sure who it is really as I too do not know many wise Chinese scholars. Tzu, the Art of War author probably doesn't qualify. But whoever it was is still wrong. A journey even of less than a 1000 miles begins with heaps of time on screen booking accommodations, connecting flights, transport on GoOpti, insurance and the myriad of other details that need to be attended to. Jasmina, whose English is better than my Croatian, has become a pretty regular contributor to my email inbox. Julie, the travel agent and Yana from Traventuria who has organised ... read more