Once again we awoke early and were first into breakfast. As usual it was excellent and we made sure we had our fill.
We had arranged for two of our cases to be kept in the hotel until our return
from Melbourne and set off by Uber to the airport. As has been our
experience in the past, the driver would not accept a tip.
Luggage drop was very much a do-it-yourself job, even including weighing the
case and sending it off on its way - all very high tech.
There was quite a lot of confusion as to which gate we were to leave from.
Eventually we were happy that we were at the right gate, but that wasn't the end
of our fun. First of all they wouldn't let us board because the plane was
too hot. Then we were informed that boarding would be slow as it would be done
manually for the sake of practice for the staff, even though we were already well late. So we eventually took off over an hour late - seems to be the
norm these days.
The flight was just over an hour but it was a bit bumpy. When we got off
the plane in Melbourne the 44C degree heat and strong wind hit us, burning the skin on ouir faces and almost taking us off our feet.
We seemed to
walk miles to the baggage reclaim but eventually got our case and found an
Uber. It was quite a long drive into the city and our first impression was that
Melbourne was yet another different city compared to Sydney, Perth or Adelaide and, once we've finished our visit here, the only major city left for us to visit in Australia will be Brisbane and we'll see that, albeit briefly, on our cruise. However we'll get a better
impression when we have a look around when hopefully it's cooled down a bit.
We've come back to reality with the hotel. The Novotel in Melbourne, whilst OK,
is not at all in the same league as the Sofitel in Sydney.
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