off to AUS

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A 6:00am flight did not sound too bad when planning the trip, but the two hour check in made it 4 and showering made it 3...in any event we were off. The flight was uneventful, and the sun rise was beautiful.

A little glitch arose that the nunnery had stopped their shuttle since we made the bookings, but a guy driving a small bus overheard us and said he would be going that way if we could wait for his arriving tourists....we could wait. Ended up another family got in the same situation so his bus had several on it and we got a tour of the town in the process of dropping people off.

The Nunnery is a hostel in a renoved building right across the street from the new museum and in a wonderful location. The City of Melbourne has a bus route and a tram route for tourist to take free of charge..hop on/hop off arrangement, so it was great for getting the lay of the land. They have a huge market where you can get about everything. It was Sunday so we were also able to take in the Artist market in the Art Centre district.

We were actually surprised how great Melbourne is as a city, Sydney gets all the press. I really got into the modern buildings...I found them them really quite fresh with different expressions from what we see in ATL. It was also to see all the old buildings and the amazing detailing. The new $300M museaum is what gives modern architecture such a bad rap with the lay person...right next to a historic exhibition complex, with no gesture or any sort of context...it looked like it fell from the sky. The newspaper was full of employment adds looking for architects..."Project Manager, $50M+ projects, $150K, 64-76 hrs per fortnight. I think a fortnight is two weeks!!!"

We're always looking for gardens and the Royal Botanical Garden could be one of the best we have ever visited. I didn't bore you with the pictures, but I got into taking pictures of just tree trunks...the barks are gorgeous. A good part of it was that the gardens were started in the mid 1800s. We also enjoyed seeing all of the birds that were new to us...amazing variety and color. We were intrigued by the Bell Bird that has a call sounding, as you might expect, like a loud bell. There are also a lot of parrots and such so the colors were really neat.

We had thought we might use a bus to travel from Melbourne, but the more we acknowledged how much we enjoy doing our own thing, we decided to get a car. Hunted down a CBD location for rentals, signed up for an A.M. pickup and then walked to a nice neighborhood near the hostel for an Italian dinner.

Next destination ...the Old Ocean Road.

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