AP to Melbourne Tuesday 2/12/08

After our great weather yesterday we are anxious to be up with the sun this morning, but it rises behind some offshore clouds which means we can get a slow start. After some breakfast bars and fruit we take a walk around town and John snares a ham and salad sandwich from the bakery for lunch. After a quick stop at the info center to check out the next stretch of road we find our car and get moving.

We have had nothing but Camrys on this trip. In NZ Toyotas were everywhere, far and away the most popular with Fords, the rest of the Japanese contingent, and a smattering of Euro cars making up the rest. Here it is all about the Holden. Holden is the true Aussie car company although it has been partnered with GM since the ‘30s. There is no sign of GM anywhere on the cars except the recognizable model names such as Calais and Caprice. In fact the only brand indication is the Holden lion-head logo. Holden is GM’s partner in the Korean car-maker Daewoo so you just don’t know the players without a program.

We work our way northeast up the coast and as we pull away from the ocean and enter a eucalyptus forest (we now call them eukkies in Aussie speak) we round a curve and, of course, see a band of Koalas napping in the trees all around us. There are a bunch of tourists pulled over here snapping pictures and we join them. We now have about 50 pictures of the elusive Koala. No denying, they are cute.

There are a lot of "coasts" in Oz and today we are traveling along the "Surf Coast." Aptly named, the shoreline alternates between rocky and sandy with a constant beat of pounding surf and bands of surfers at every parking area. Our last stop on the Great Ocean Road is Anglesea where we pull into a park for a picnic lunch. It is now windy and cool so we eat in the car and polish off the last of the Cheese World cheese along with the nifty bakery ham sandwich.

Now it is hold our breath and head into the big city. We have heard that Melbourne is the hardest of all Aussie cities to drive in because they have little oddities like trolley track lanes, parking in the middle of the road with u-turn openings and right turns only from the left lane. What we assumed would be city exits from the motorway are not, so we are tossed into the city streets on the opposite end of town than planned. We have a nice tour of the Olympic park, the cricket grounds, Rod Laver stadium and a branch of the Yarra river, none of which are anywhere near where we need to be. We finally stop, reassess our position and get a new plan that works pretty well. We whip a u-turn in front of our hotel, make our own parking space and check in without further incident. The Hertz office is just a few blocks up the street so we find a petrol station, gas up and get the car returned in one piece. Whew.

We take a stroll around the city, finding the only restaurant on our Melbourne list, Grossi Florentino. They are not open but we find a worker who tells us that they are full Wednesday and Thursday for Valentines day celebrations so we book a table for 7:30 tonight. There is an active Chinatown here as well as theater and shopping so we walk around looking like the tourists we are as all the worker bees are scurrying home from work.

After a bit of a rest we make it to our 7:30 booking and the dining room is pretty dead when we arrive, although it fills up a bit later. We remember that whenever there is a big dining must-do night like Valentine’s day, the nights around it tend to suffer. Mary has a veal fillet that is very nice and John has the special "Rotisserie Suckling Pig" that is melt in your mouth tender and is surrounded by quartered baby rosemary potatoes that are so good that we know they were in a pan underneath that little pig when it was twirling. We have been eating out so much it is getting harder to work up the energy for a big-time restaurant but this is a nice treat.

A pleasant walk back to the hotel and off to bed.

Today’s local headline: Diggers sent to crisis in Timor The Australian (The Aussie army is trying to maintain peace in East Timor and more troops are sent after an assassination attempt on the ET President.)