It's been a long while since our last blog as we've been pretty busy since our last update in Auckland.
We flew out of Auckland for Melbourne on Tuesday on a flight which took about 4 hours. We had our transfer to our hotel booked so getting to our accommodation was nice and straight forward. The first thing that we did notice when we left the air conditioning of the airport was the ridiculous heat!! We were told that it was 40 degrees on the day we arrived and you could definitely feel it. We were very impressed with the hotel we had booked, Tune hotel, as it was pretty cheap and we were unsure what to expect. For the rest of our first day in Melbourne, we just explored the city and looked around Melbourne central which is a big shopping centre above the central station and the Little Italy part of the city. However the temperature meant that venturing outside for too long without air con was difficult. We stopped for a couple of frozen cokes which seem to be popular here and we can both definitely see why!!
On Wednesday, we headed down to St. Kilda on the tram. It's a really nice area of the city with a nice beach so we had a good day chilling on the beach in the vastly reduced temperature. We then had a few drinks in the room on Wednesday night with our duty free purchases from our flight from New Zealand.
On Thursday, we decided to hire a car and drive down the Great Ocean Road to a place called Apollo Bay. What a good decision that was. The scenery along the road was truly amazing with the road running right along the coast and looking out over beaches and the ocean. We stopped at quite a few beaches and small towns down the coast to look out and enjoy the scenery. We would definitely recommend hiring a car and doing it if anyone gets the chance and its much cheaper than going on an organised tour.
Friday arrived and we were moving hotels to the Hilton with Joy, Beth's cousin, who was out here on business. We met on Friday morning and had a bit of a look around a Chinese market which was on before we headed back to the hotel to check out our room. Wow!! It's definitely the best room we have stayed in so far and makes such a difference from some of the hostels in South America. We then headed out for some food and for a few afternoon drinks along the South Wharf promenade which is really nice. On Friday night, we went to the cricket at the MCG to watch England get hammered by Australia again. We all had a really good night though and the stadium was absolutely huge.
On Saturday, we were all feeling a bit fuzzy from the night before so we headed for some food in Federation Square to sort ourselves out. This worked a treat and as the weather was heating up again we sought out some shade and air con in a few bars along the South Wharf and had a really good afternoon and night. We then watched the Newcastle match on Saturday night but the less said about that the better!!!
Sunday was a bit of a waste of a day for me as I was feeling the effects of the previous two days. So Beth and Joy headed to St. Kilda whilst I stayed in the room all day and enjoyed the air con. We got pizzas delivered to the room on our last night of luxury at the Hilton and we will certainly miss it. We've had a great few days with Joy and its a shame we couldn't have spent longer together. A massive thank you from the both of us for the room and a great few days.