heather's amazing stuff

We got a wake up call around 7:45 because originally we were going to go on the wine tasting tour but then decided we didn't really want to spend our last day locked into something like that. Also it was $85/per person and one of those didn't even include lunch so we didn't want to risk not having fun. However, the tour company called us saying they were waiting for us outside our hotel. We'd told them we'd meet them at their drop off station because it'd give us more time to get ready but they didn't listen. I told the front desk to tell them we'd meet them there. We hadn't paid for anything yet so Rob called the reservations # and told them we decided to cancel. BUT...who can go back to sleep now? And the Australian tv channels that were available to us were not that entertaining...although I did enjoy a show called GMA-Good Morning Australia. I'll talk about that more in my "observations of Australia" post. We tried to get more sleep and I finally ended up taking a shower and getting ready for the day.

We weren't sure what we were going to do so we looked at the map to try to decide what we'd missed and what we wanted to see. We decided to just start out and go walking and hopefully we'd end up at the museums or some park we hadn't seen. We had gotten some guidance of cool places to go from this guy at a didjeridoo store...I don't think we went to any of them, but they looked sort of far and we walked everywhere in Melbourne.

I did want to go back to the market to get a few souvenirs for people. We did that and then Rob ended up suggesting we go to the Hardware area for lunch. It was sort of late and I was getting so hungry that I was willing to go to Quiznos! There were a lot of alleyways that seemed to have restaurants and cafes in them and so we headed down an alley and found that people in Melbourne do not work on Friday! It was around 1:15 p.m. and the restaurants were packed--at least the outside tables!!! We did find one restaurant that had a couple of open tables and so we decided to eat there. I wondered why they had so many open tables but it turned out to be great food and I got to have lamb one last time! We had an American waiter from Kansas who somehow met an Australian girl and moved there about a year and a half ago, so it was fun to talk to him.

After that, we decided to head over to the park that we'd missed and the area with the museum.
When we finally made it over to the area with the museum, we were hoping it'd still be open. Right next to the museum was the exhibition hall which is a UNESCO National Heritage building. It was really pretty. I thought the clouds were actually very pretty in this picture too.



Here is another picture with a beautiful fountain in front of it. I thought I'd stood in the pic w/it but I guess not.



We finally headed over to the museum which was right behind this hall. It was quite a contrast as you'll see when you see the pictures. The museum was quite modern.



Because the museum closed at 5 and it was already 4, Rob got the woman to let us in for free! It ended up being a pretty nice museum and I wish I could have stayed a bit longer but when it was time to go, it was time to go! They started letting you know that about 20 minutes ahead of time. Here's another cool pic of the interior.



After dinner, we once again walked around. While there was a lot to do in Melbourne, there seemed to be more organized ways to go about touring in Sydney (or at least I thought). so we found ourselves roaming more in Melbourne. It was now dinner time and so we were trying to decide where to go for our last meal in Australia. We found a Mexican restaurant and decided to try that out. The place was packed. The whole time we were there, there was only 1 empty table. There was a steady flow of people in and out...this got us to thinking, we never saw a Taco Bell in Australia. We saw the other fast food restaurants that were a part of the same corporation but no bell...we could open a few and make a fortune!!!

After we were done with dinner I was quite tired and a little loopy since we'd had a couple of margaritas. BUT we were on a mission. We had to buy some Tim Tams. We'd waited the entire trip to buy them and this was both a good and a bad thing. It was a bad thing because we couldn't find a convenience store that had the selection we wanted, so we had to walk to the coles which was a ways from our hotel room. The good of this was, once we got back here and tried them, we loved them.... If we'd discovered this when we were there, we'd have gone through too many boxes and defeated the good we'd done on all of our walks!

We got one last bottle of solo and headed back to our hotel. While all of the population was out in full force and ready to have fun, we needed to head back because we had an early flight and I still needed to finish packing.

Goodbye Melbourne!