Let’s do some Australia recapping, shall we?

We left Friday and arrived to Melbourne on Sunday morning. Rich and I got in a few hours sooner than the rest of our group, so we made our way to the house and then headed out to the cafe I posted pictures of for breakfast. We rested until the rest of the group got here and then once everyone was freshened up we headed to a gastro pub type place for lunch. I had a Fizzer, which is a really light cider type beer. They asked if I wanted ice in it, which is new to me and ciders, but when in Oz. We decided to take a walk towards where the tennis stadiums are and get the lay of the land. We were going to pivot into the Royal Botannical gardens and take in the views and just chill.

Of course, I am not quite chill. And I had not adjusted to vacation mode with others yet. It will take another day or two from this point to get into this mode. I had done so much work to get us here from a planning perspective, that a little directional help from others would have been welcome. So, for now, I remain a little uptight, a little unsure of where we are or what day it is, and a little annoyed.

We decide from there that we want to try this pizza place that was voted as the top in Melbourne, and one of the top in the world for dinner that night. We make the reservation for 8pm and everyone takes naps in the meantime. Pizza was delicious (it’s the 48 hour cold fermentation! Must remember to make doughs more in advance at home.) and we saw the South Yarra neighborhood, which looked very hip.

Monday was downtown day. We trammed into the Flinder’s Street Station, which is the building on much of Melbourne’s City Guides and promotional materials when you’re looking up Melbourne. We started with an alleyway breakfast (which was very good), and then wandered through some of the old arcades. These are buildings built in the late 1890’s during the Australian Gold Rush and are now eclectic little shopping malls. We poked around and then made our way to the State Library of Victoria. From there we grabbed the city center tram and Rex, Rich and I decided to go to this kooky art exhibit I had read about and Jenna and Shawn decided to do a full loop on the city loop tram. The art exhibit was absolutely wackadoodle, which I loved. Some highlights:

• Banana taped to a wall with duct tape that the artists insists is changed out every 7 – 10 days and it’s a commentary on interacting with art.
• A video installation of a woman interpreting all the emojis in photographs
• Sculpture of birds on a tree
• Sculpture of old furniture legs turned into a piece that looks like a fallen tree as a memorandum on how we just discarded furniture that the tree gave it’s life for
• Super bizarre animated video screens decrying commercialism and immorality

Lifetime of memories, right there. After that we met back up for lunch along the river and then back to apartment to rest / be done for the rest of the day it turns out.

Tuesday was the Australian Open Day! Rich has a goal to attend the four Grand Slam tournaments: AO, Wimbledon, US Open and French Open. The whole group got seats for the afternoon session and Rich and Rex added on the evening session. I love a festive atmosphere and getting to the Open grounds was so fun. We got there right when it opened, got free seat cushions and sunscreen, meet the most wonderful volunteer Kathleen who oriented us to the spaces and courts available. We went shopping immediately so Rich could get his pick of merch. He’s not a jump up and down squealing kind of guy, but I’m pretty sure he was on Cloud 9. We got lunch and drinks and then made our way to the court for the noon match, which was the number one woman in the world, playing an American who has previously won the tournament. It is by far the most tennis I’ve watched and Jenna summed it up well that all sports are so much better live. I’ve tried to watch tennis on TV. I find it boring. I also don’t understand the scoring which makes it hard to follow. Rich had given me a lesson I paid attention to earlier in the day and I was ready to be at the AO.

Our first match was the number one ranked woman against American Sophia Kenin who won this championship in 2020, but has not played much in the last few years. It was a great match to watch to introduce myself to live tennis. Rich was a great sport when we had questions. It’s a quieter sport with almost no down time. The second match we had tickets to was a young Danish player vs Yoshi, a fast and more experienced player. It was really exciting (even if I find tennis matches go on a little long) and we were sad Yoshi didn’t beat the kid, but the kid did win more gracefully than he played.

The AO grounds become THE place to be after work and as we were leaving people were streaming in to just chill in the party atmosphere. Rich and Rex were sticking around for the evening session, so Jenna, Shawn and I ended up walking back to the house due to delays on the tram system and being READY to be done. We picked up poke bowls on the way back for dinner and ate at the house.

As an aside from the chronological review, it turns out my patience can be thin even with the closest of friends when I feel annoyed. Working on it.

Anyway – there are the recaps of full days 1 and 2 in Melbourne!