Melbourne day three

After a bad night of sleep in the hotel (too noisy, crap bed) and a reasonably OK breakfast we went to Marisa. Then we had a fantastic lunch prepared by her mom and after that we drove in to town to visit Brunswick Street. One of the nicer streets in Melbourne with lots of little cafes.

A guy was playing above average blues music in front of a bunch of dead ducks.

Brunswick Street. It was nice and sunny.

Afterwards we went to Marisa's parents house again. I watched bowls.

Waiting at the airport. I think Melbourne Airport is my second least favourite one after Heathrow in London. It looked crap. Everything was old. Bar stool seats were broken. Only one out of five monitors with flight information was still functioning as designed. Also one out of five monitors could not be read at all.

At least the view was somewhat entertaining.

Melbourne day two

There is an Irish pub close by. They sell Bulmers cider but I -think- it's the English one instead of the Irish one.

Hanging out in Melbourne after breakfast, recharching my phone.

Lots of morning traffic.

Nicole in Melbourne. She was pretty tired.

Nicole picking her nose (not really!) at the German embassy while waiting for forms to be filled out to get her new passport.

We walked from the embassy in to town through the botanical gardens.

There are also lots of European trees that are dropping leaves now.

It was a very pleasant walk.



Then we walked past my future... ;-)

And we walked past this musicall art. Lots of bells playing little melodies.

A ferris wheel.

I think because it was lunch time, there were a LOT of runners walking everywhere.

Over the tracks.

Parliament house.

In the evening we were waiting for Angeli and Ruud, people we only knew through Nicole's blog. They recently immigrated and since we were in town we thought we'd have a bit of dinner together. We waited for them opposite the train station.

It got dark before we found a restaurant.

Marisa, Nicole, Angeli and Ruud. (spot the Dutchie!)

Angeli drinking her first wine in a year's time.

Marisa and Ruud.

It was lovely to meet them and I hope their immigration will be most successful! :-)

Melbourne day one.

Mouth masks at the airport. Not that there was anything wrong with these people but we can all get on the scare tactics bandwagon of course...

Lots of leg-room on the airplane...g
We took an express bus in to the city of melbourne.

We had to change bus when we reached the outskirts of the city. This was the view while waiting for our mini-bus that would bring us to our hotel.

We had a bit of a stroll and Nicole found something to play with.

The back (or side?) of the Princess' Theatre.

The first time EVER I heard of this beer. Apparently it's the most famous of Italian beers.

We stay in a "serviced appartment" so we had to do some shopping. Naturally that means buying milk.

And some fruit.

First things first: Connecting to the hive.

I wanted to look in the GEOX shop here in Melbourne and I scored! I bought two pair of last season's shoes for less of the price of one pair!

In the evening we went out for dinner with Rob and Marisa. We went to an Italian restaurant where they use spelt instead of flower. The food was nice. Yeah, all three courses. I had not eaten this much in two months.

Marisa and Nicole.


They have a gazillion rollers hanging from their ceiling.

Books and beach

The two doves (that had 2 x 2 babies while nesting on our veranda) had made another nest in a tree in the back of our garden. They're not very good at it. They screwed up last year as well. Anyway, one day we found both new babies on the ground under the nest. One was dead (it's a 3.5 metre fall) and one was alive. That one now has a little apartment in the shed where it's being fed by the parents. It will fly out soon I reckon.

Late morning we drove in to town. We had an elevator photo shoot.

All the shops were closed except for Borders books. I bought this third edition of Cocoa programming for Mac OS X. I had bought the second edition a year ago which was too old for the software that I have and I missed out on the book last visit. So I secured my copy today.

Some little girl was hiding from me.

Outside in Rundle mall Jan Vayne was playing a few tunes.

Then we had lunch at a place called Saldechin. It was in an old bank building.

Food was asian orientated and quite nice. Bit of a weird atmosphere though I thought.

Nicole posing with an ad she put together.

When we came home, the in laws had returned from Ikea and were putting together the new purchases. Well, actually only Tony was and I think everybody else was cheering.

In the evening we went to Henley.

We walked on the jetty a bit before going to the Thai Orchid.

The weather was great, bit windy.

The sun set while we were having a fantastic dinner.

Afterwards we had coffee.