Melbourne, AU - Downtown

Today we were docked in Melbourne, Australia. The ship was supposed to arrive at 8 am however they did not allow people off the ship until after 8:30am. (A little annoying if you got up early to get off at 8am then had to wait. We were planning to get off around 8:30am so it worked fine for us).

They had a free bus from the pier into Melbourne from 8:30am until 11:00am. After 11:00am, you had to take a public tram to and from the port (at a cost of $3.60 AUD per person for a 2 hour tram pass, which is all we needed since we only went back to the ship at the end of the day). The bus dropped us off at the art museum. We walked into downtown (about a 5 minutes walk from there).


The first thing we did was the Melbourne Observation Deck from the Rialto Building. The Rialto Building is the tallest building in the southern hemisphere. It was neat to go up in it. Once on top, you had a 360-degree view of the city. There were large glass windows you could look out. There were two outside observation decks that you could view the city from too. Also there they showed a 20 minutes video of Melbourne. There was no commentary and were not that impressed with the video. The observation tower was very good though and offered excellent views of the city.

Afterwards we started walking to the royal botanic gardens. On our way we went through three other parks: Alexandra Gardens, Queen Victoria Gardens and King’s Domain. Once we had visited those parks, we decided not to do the botanic gardens. Then we walked back into the city.

We had lunch at Hungry Jacks (which is just like Burger King back home with the whopper on the menu and everything). Apparently the Burger King name was already taken in Australia when the U.S. company moved over here, so they had to use a different name. Then we walked the streets of downtown looking at shops and sights. It was interesting. After walking around the city for 6 hours we decided it was time to head back to the cruise ship. We bought our tram tickets. We got on the tram which was extremely crowded.

We also learned about some interesting driving rules. To avoid the trams, some intersections require that right hand turns are made from the far left lane! After the light turns red, cars cut across all lanes of traffic to turn. It is something to see and even more terrifying to do from what our Melbourne native friends told us. The locals refer to this turn as a hooky. Imagine doing this on top of driving on the opposite side of the road! Yikes!

Melbourne was not what we were expecting. We did not think there was that much to do there. It was a nice city, but not great. Maybe we are biased having just visited Sydney which set such a high standard. Sydney was definitely one of our favorite cities in the world. Along with London and Venice, these cities are in a class of their own.

The weather was also much cooler here today. We were only in shorts and t-shirts. In hindsight we should have brought a light jacket too. It was sunny though so that helped us keep warm as it eventually warmed up near 70 degrees.

We made it back to the cruise. Now we are relaxing in our stateroom. We will be going to dinner in a few hours. We will now be at sea for the next 3 days on our way to New Zealand. Two days are pure sea days and then the third is spent cruising some specific inlets of the New Zealand cost (the sounds). Bye-bye Australia, we will miss you!

We are out to sea now and the boat is really starting to sway. The crew said it is going to get much worse tomorrow. It should be interesting. Go Cavs!