Melbourne Cup Here We Come!

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Exciting! Tomorrow we head off on our 9 day Melbourne Cup adventure-it's been on our bucket list for ages so great to finally be (almost) underway. Pretty full on tour. Itinerary:

Super early start tomorrow - leave home for airport at 3am - EK! 6am flight from Wellington to Melbourne. We decided to go as part of official tour, we're first timers and there are apparently a few potential pitfalls around being able to actually watch the races when there are 100,000 people on course! That's a pretty big number! Plus we get behind the scenes look at leading stables, 2 other (in addition to Melbourne Cup) top races days and a country meeting thrown in. We know tour host Des Coppins from the Wellington Racing Cub so all good there. Bonus for us with Wellington Phoenix playing Melbourne City in the A-League at AAMI Park on Friday night so we'll get along and support the lads.

Here's how it looks.

Friday 2 November

Early start as mentioned. Bonus is it means we'll arrive in Melbourne around 8am. Tour bus organised to take us to our Hotel - The Swanston Melbourne Grand Mecure 195 Swanston St which is apparently pretty much in the heart of the city. The rest of the day is free, Jeanette had a bit of a disaster with her race day dresses, they were ordered online and got caught up in customs so didn't arrive on time. Finding suitable replacements will be top priority! Not so much looking forward to that to be fair. Will be great to cruise around central city though as we've never been to Melbourne before. 7.30pm we have official tour party meet and greet at Hotel to finish off the day.

Saturday 3 November

Derby Day - our first look at the famous Flemmington Race Course.Derby Day is the premier race day of the Cup carnival (in terms of quality of races and horses) and is regarded as on of the top race meetings in the world. Evening team drinks but we'll probably do our own thing.

Sunday 4 November

Visit to Busuttin Racing Stables , home base of leaded ex Kiwi trainers Paddy Busuttin and Natalie Young for a behind the scenes look. Then we head to the Garry Willets (former top NZ Jockey) Dingley Hotel for lunch before returning to our hotel mid afternoon.

Monday 5 November

Free day to explore Melbourne and have some fun, no plans at this stage we'll just play by ear - pretty sure pubs and a few quiet beers will feature at some stage! Monday night Cup Eve Dinner and race Show at he Pumphouse Hotel in Fitzroy-hopefully this is where we'll get all our hot tips for Cup day!

Tuesday 6 November

2018 Lexus Melbourne Cup- the big one! Cup runs at 3pm Aussie time.

Wednesday 7 November

Haven't had enough of racing sow e're off to a country meeting at Kyneton - love country races in NZ so will be interesting to compare and hopefully a bit easier to find a winner than on the big days.

Thursday 7 November

More racing! Crown Oaks (Ladies) Day at Flemmington. Once were back at he hotel there's the official wine and beer farewell party.

Friday 8 November

We've stayed an extra day so we can go to Phoenix v Melbourne City A League match. We're foundation members of the club and it will be our first big away match- really looking forward to it!

Saturday 9 November

HOME - late one as we getting around midnight

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