Melbourne Day 3

Today was started off by a restless sleep getting me out of bed at 6 a.m. and walking down the street net to Hyde park to grab a large coffee. A farther stroll around the park on this Tuesday morning led me not to not much more than lots of animals and early-to-work employees.

Catching back up with and packing our bags, we headed out to grab some quick breakfast: toast for Doug and a fruit salad for me consisting of kiwi, strawberries melon and cantelopes so perfect that a plastic fork cut right through it.

Grabbing another coffee to go and grabbing a cab, we headed to the airport. Most foreigners that I encounter in Europe have no idea where Oklahoma City is (or have never even heard of it, usually I have to tell them, "it's right above Texas.")...not true in Australia.

Everyone that we have asked knows about Oklahoma City and all of them agree that they know about it for the wrong reasons...April 19, 1995.

Everytime that it mentioned I always follow up with a short spiel about what else Oklahoma City is about and try to teach as much as I can in the short amount of time I have. The taxi driver asked a lot of questions and seemed really nice so maybe he learned something this morning...or maybe he is just a really good taxi driver and works for tips.

Arriving at the airport I noticed a big difference between our security in the US and the security of domestic flights in Australia. I was able to get to my gat without showing my ID/Passport one time...not to the ticket counter, bag check and even through the security line. Also, going through the security line I left my shoes on, my hat on, my jacket on and casually walked through the metal detector carrying my cup of coffee.

At my gate, I wandered to the free wine tasting in our terminal and heard lots of info about how big and popular Shiraz is for Australians and exports.

After getting some tips from Margaret, lady sitting next to us in the waiting area, we now had a better idea on what to do when we got to Melbourne.

We found our hotel and started our walk...and it was hot. Melbourne got up into the upper 80's today and will be the same tomorrow. We found out that an Australian sporting match that we've been looking forward to attending will actually happen, tomorrow (Cricket). We decided to save all exploring of the parks and Rod Laver Arena (Australian Open) for tomorrow since that is also where the Melbourne Cricket Grounds is located...so today was filled with walking throughout the CBD and riding all the trams and talking to a few locals on their opinions of the city.

We went to the Melbourne Museum and the ACMI for a few hours where a "technology" exhibit made it accessible for me to play some atari games as if I was in 1983 again.

A trip to City Hall and Parliment, and a walk next to St. Patrick's Cathedral and St. Paul's Cathedral rounded off a long day of walking around...feet are killing me. Ready to find a local pub and "hang out" we got word that "The Metropolitan" was THE spot to go to...found it, stayed for a couple hours, then back to the hotel to cap what was our latest night out...10:30 p.m.