Melbourne Week

Saturday, 8 October 2022

Our holiday in Melbourne is drawing to a close with a few city sprint style events this weekend that I've been looking forward to.  I must say that it didn't start that well with a 90 minute wait outside the Airbnb accommodation to get the key (only hours after being told that the building didn't allow short stay accommodation and to be discreet).  I am not sure how discreet this was (Jon waiting outside apartment):

The apartment was nice though - it had great views:

although the washing/drying machine failed to complete the drying very well, so the internal decor was less than desirable:

Each day I walked to work in South Melbourne - just 15 minutes away, while Jon worked from home and occasionally accompanied the kids on their activites.  They went shopping,  ice skating, to movies and even for a run. We also went to Hamilton, which was really really good.  Unfortunately I must have eaten something bad on Wednesday night as I was sick for most of Thursday, but I was miraculously ok again on Friday in time to pick up our hire car, do a quick trip to Ikea, then drive way out of town to do an activity I'd normally avoid at all costs - a tourist train!

I was sure Puffing Billy wasn't going to be much fun as it was bucketing down with rain (to the point of minor flash flooding on the roads) as we drove out there. But as the train left the station it stopped raining until about 5 minutes before we got back there 3.5 hours later. The trip was really really fun!  You are allowed to hang out of the carriages and in our case (as we were in the first one), get occasionally completely showered by bits of coal!  It's still in my hair.

We had an hour at a nice park between the out and back journey so we had lunch and did a short walk. Overall it was the perfect activity for a day where we had to wait until 3pm before we could check in to our new apartment in Box Hill (closer to the orienteering and with parking for our car).  In the evening Jon and I went back into town to see another show - Come From Away - which was fun as well.   It was a big day and I was glad to be feeling ok again!