Darling Towers Executive Apart Melbourne

... to 600 mm! Oh my god, thank goodness it was a calm day for once! But the views were totally awesome, and clearly very high! You could get right up to the glass and the floor was kind of uneven, which was slightly disconcerting! Every looked so small, but it was good to get this perspective of the city and put the location and scale of the buildings into some kind of context. I just sat and stared at the view for ages, totally mesmerised by it. It was a lovely ...

... then decided to have a coffee to see if it would clear. It didn’t but the lady on the desk kindly stamped my ticket and said I could come back any time to have another go at seeing the view. Nice touch.

Once down I headed into town but the rain was so fierce I needed shelter. I also needed more coffee so it once again a dive into Starbucks for bucket of Americano and a muffin – which I stretched out long enough to feel vaguely ...

... person to chuck would lose. If no one threw up, the agreement was that Scotty would come round to my house in the morning with his 16 month old twins - whoever dealt with that best would be crowned the winner!

To be honest, I think I'm glad I chucked because there's no way I could've handled the twins this morning. We got things underway at about half 2 in the afternoon and things just escalated from there. It was an open bar so obviously ...

... a working class part of town which suddenly got very popular with the students and after that with the more rich people. St.Kilda is situated close to the beach and has a very nice beach esplanade stretching a few kilometres. They have a long shopping and busy street with lots of clothes shops and a cafe every fifth metre or so. One has to keep the coffee thirsty happy of course, and for the sweet lips... there are a lot of bakeries with a lot ...

... small population with a relatively large amount of arable land (even after you take out all the desert and not-arable bits, we still have lots of land.) It is possible, in Australia, to be more than 3 hours from any major city, which is probably about the distance anyone could travel when fleeing riots in the cities. There are numerous country properties well away from major highways, where one could, in all probability, set up a little farming spot ...

... das Stockbett, ich liege im oberen Bett, leicht zu schwanken beginnt. Aha, unser Zimmergenosse geht zu Bett. Das stört mich nicht weiter, ich drehe mich um und döse noch eine Weile, aber als dann unten auf der Straße ein Müllwagen einen Riesenkrach macht, beschließe ich aufzustehen. Sofia und Peter scheinen nur darauf gewartet zu haben, sie sind schon längst wach. Wir ziehen uns an und gehen in den Frühst ...

... because most of us find it really impossible to sleep. This is not a good thing, especially because we get to Hong Kong in the morning. Followed by a whole day at lama island. :{ !! It will be interesting to see how we all take it, but I am tipping it won't be our favourtite day on our trip, but then again in China we never know what to expect......

... the 2008/9 meat pie championships, and I'm going to back them up... mmmm they were good. Today we headed off to Hanging Rock and Mt Macedon.  Hanging Rock was a very cool eroded volcano with amazing views of the valley and Mt. Macedon has a historic cross in memory of Australia's contribution to WWI.  Unfortunately we have yet to see a koala but we did run into some lizards.  Very cool.  Anyways we are off to the footy game which we can't wait for.

... so we could be at the airport early but we had to take the car back first this proved more difficult than driving around australia, i think we asked at least 4 people & phoned apollo up twice, we had directions from apollo already on a piece paper, also scott had helped us with another map. the flight went without a hitch & we landed safely in n.z. & while we were waiting for our luggage a sniffer ...

... morning, so some folks must have been very eager. The gangway location changes depending on the port facilities, so I'm not even sure how people would have known where to go before the official announcement.   We headed up to breakfast and back to the cabin to get ready to go home - Alan had some work to do, and it was cheaper to do it at home than using the internet connection on board. The crowds disembarking had gone, but the quarantine dog was ...