Monday, May 27-Wednesday, May 29, 2019

Good morning! In actuality, I am cheating because it’s Thursday morning. I’m also not Greg, who usually writes for the family vacation report, but I didn’t want to get too far behind, and I have a few minutes as I wait for everyone to get ready to go out for the day. There’s also not a lot to report.

Travel went mostly as expected. American Airlines decided to reseat us, and we all won the middle seat lottery—all 6 of us in a different middle seat in the back of the plane. The gate agent explained that selecting seats when you purchase your tickets is really only a request. Good to know… American has slipped a few notches in my preferred airline list (sorry Uncle Mike). But it was only to CA, so certainly not the end of the world. Qantas Airline, however, was really lovely for our long flight across the ocean and the international date line. Lots of buttons to press, lots of movies, those cool seats that lay all the way back into beds. We’re counting this flight as the start of vacation.

Ok so we land without incident in Melbourne. We know it’s Winter. We know we’re on the other side of the equator. We’ve been monitoring the temps for a few days. Still, coming from Nashville’s sunny 93 degrees Fahrenheit on Sunday, and stepping out to Melbourne’s cloudy (scattered showers) 12 degrees Celsius felt particularly cold. I keep reading “cold snap” and “these doors are closed due to high winds.” Combined with the jet lag, we feel a little less resilient to the weather than usual. I’m hoping that we will bounce back as we adjust to the time.

We’d kept Wednesday pretty open, not being sure how we’d feel. We landed just before 8 am, but by the time we cleared customs, got the car, and dealt with traffic to the hotel, it was about 10:30 am. Audrey saw kangaroos as we were driving, but the rest of us missed them. Our historic hotel, The Hotel Windsor, is beautiful but the rooms (as expected) were not ready at 10:30 am. So how do you deal with the time change and weather? Go for a walk, of course. We found shops, lunch and what we think is the theater district. Crossed a river—again those winds! Checked back with the hotel and were able to get in our rooms and shower. That perked most of us up enough to go out to dinner. Audrey struggled to not fall asleep at the table, and we enjoyed reminding her that both Gillian and she used to do that pretty regularly when they were younger. I’ll see if Greg has any comparison photos on his computer. Greg picked a dinner restaurant that served kangaroo, but he didn’t have any takers to try it last night, so maybe today. Lots of great shops around the hotel, too, but we were all just too tired to put effort into buying things. Greg should take note of these flight times, because they saved him lots of money. Plus, most things here are winter wear, and we are going back to those 93 degrees. Oh, we also used the free tram system, and that was nice. Standing room only, but that’s ok.

So general impressions? I don’t think we made the most of our Wednesday in Melbourne, but the time change and weather are taking a toll. It was a good choice not to go driving around on Wednesday. We have plans for Thursday and Friday that should help us get back on track, and we have our coats out of the suitcases now. Melbourne seems lovely. A city (which is not all of the kids’ favorite place to be), but fairly clean, lots of shopping, lots of little coffee shops, restaurants, and interesting buildings. We’re off to breakfast now, and we’ll see if we can find some stuff that makes us think of more stereotypical Australia. Here we come little koala!