As we got up early to say good bye to Apollo Bay and head out towards Melbourne, we stopped at the beach for a few last pictures of the gorgeous surf and sunshine. It was only a 2 1/2 hour drive and we had some options for getting into the city. We considered taking the suggestion of others and catching a ferry to cross a bay and come into the city from below, but we realized cost and timing were not on our side so we kept to the freeway, heading through Torquay, Geelong and Werribee.
We stopped in Torquay in use the internet at McDonalds, but it wouldn't log on, so we searched for a library and were able to get our normal life stuff done aka check the bank and Facebook.
Melbourne was our first big city and we had to find out hotel in the downtown of South Yarra. Little did we know this area was a major player in the traffic of Melbourne and we found ourselves in massive city traffic, thankful for Nancy the GPS to tell us when to turn and such. I couldn't imagine what it would have been like if all we had was print off Google Maps.
As we were driving through the city keeping an eye out for the hotel, the car started to give us some trouble, not idling well and kinda coughing, making Siyani and I very nervous. We finally had to pull over, on a massively congested street in a no parking zone because the car died. Thankfully we were on the same street as the hotel, we just weren't sure how far from it we were. Siyani figured out that some cords had fallen on the fan which prevented it from cooling the engine and this is why the car died. So while he moved the cords and let the engine cool down, I walked up the street the find the hotel. Turns out we were only 3 blocks away. After checking in and finding out where the parking was, Siyani braved merging into the craziest traffic I have ever seen (even Vancouver has nothing on this place) and we finally got parked and into out hotel room. Due to the wonderfulness that was this adventure, there are sadly no pictures from this particular day, as the craziness was yet to continue.
That evening we had reservations for drinks and appies at a club in the downtown. We got tickets for the train and I asked the lady at the booth which way we would need to go once we exited to get to our street for our reservations. Basically things did not go according to plan. We walked in the complete wrong direction, got turned around, ended up back at the train station at the time we should have been at the club, Siyani figured out which way we needed to go and it was like 8 blocks down three blocks up, 30 minutes of more walking and when we finally got to the club they informed us that we should have received a call as the evenings entertainment that we had paid for was rescheduled to the next week and would we mind coming back then. This is where we finally caught a break. The manager for the night was a backpacker turned Melbourneite who understood everything we had just gone through and understood why we couldn't comeback (as in we would be in Brisbane by then) felt terrible for all the confusion and comped us 4 drinks and a full dinner. Turned out it wold be one of the best meals we would eat on our whole trip and one I would try and re create from time to time. Creamy Pumpkin Risotto for me and a perfectly cooked steak for Siyani. After the days events we walked back to the train station, crawled to the hotel and got a well deserved nights sleep in preparation for the rest of Melbourne.
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