Wow, what a weekend that was! First of all, I'm completely converted to Air NZ. The crew was lovely and I really appreciated the inflight entertainment :) Hours and hours of the Mighty Boosh, Samantha Who and Top Gear!
I can't say I fell in love with the city, but it was great to see Jen again and I would love to go back with my parents to show them around!
The highlight of the trip was Wicked. I managed to get the girls to go, and I'm so pleased we did! The staging, costumes, singing, was spectacular. Having read the books (Wicked, Son of a Witch and A Lion Among Men) I was intrigued as to how they could turn this into a musical, but they did a wonderful job. Sadly, Rob Guest passed away not long before we arrived, but Bert Newton was a lovely replacement.
Then there was St Kilda. What an incredibly beautiful area! Cindy and I could have sent an entire afternoon there and we found this fantastic bar with lounges outside and a stunning view of the beach. Sadly the others we'ren't as enamoured as we were and made it clear they didn't want to stay for longer than a few minutes. We managed to dig our feet in for half an hour then the grumping and moaning got too much so we left. Sigh.
I was super impressed by the tram system, though I would have liked a couple more air conditioned trams as we were there on the hottest recorded day in Melbourne history! I believe the temperature reached 46.7 degrees celcius in some areas.... I've never experienced anything like that heat! We left the hotel at 8am and it was already very warm. By the time we got to the Tropicana Food bar for breakfast, there were little whirlwinds of grit and dirt scraping our burning skin. By midday the air felt almost too hot to breathe and we were feeling short of breath and drained. The incredible heat is difficult to explain, but it was like standing a little too close to the oven when you open it, just this intense wall of heat that continued on through out the day until a sudden rain shower in the early evening when the temperature dropped by about 15 degrees and stayed that way.
We visited as many places as possible in our short stay, though sadly I was extremely sleep deprived and ended up going home earlier in the evening than the rest of the girls. We visited a couple of great restaurants, had the best pearl tea I've ever had in my life and got to experience self service check outs for the first time! DFO was the most insanely huge place I've ever visited, and Bridge Road... Well, it's hard to say as we decided to visit this on the hotest day, and I don't think this helped our impression much! All the doors were closed to keep in the cool air, and there were dozens of signs everywhere saying 'come in, we've got air conditioning!'.
The biggest downer for me was the window between the single and double room in our apartment. It was frosted so that you can't see through and was perfect for letting light in during the day, however when the light was on in the double room at night or if the door to the double was open and the light was on in the lounge, it lit up the single room bright enough to read by. I found this extremely frustrating when I was trying to sleep (being already sleep deprived), especially as I had pointed this out to the roomie and asked if she could keep the door shut, to no effect. Also the sliding doors in the single didn't quite shut, and the bright strip that shone through when the light was on in the lounge was right in line with my face! After the first night, I changed the arrangement of the single bedroom and placed the bed along the far wall, which helped with the strip of light, though not so much on the window (though at least the bright square was no longer in my line of sight). I had originally planned to get a single room on my own (I'm a terrible insomniac and the smallest thing can throw me off for days) and I really wish I'd just done that. Also my roomie was used to living on her own and just wouldn't compromise (she had the air con set so cold I was shivering, when I asked her to turn it up, her response was, 'no, I'm perfectly comfortable thank you very much'. Hmmmm).
I used to have to travel a lot for my job with anyone from the company, so I'm very used to staying with people I don't know well and having to work and living around each other, but I forgot that other people might not be so used to it. Lesson learned for next time! I really was in such a bad mood by the time we left that it tainted my whole trip and I probably looked like a complete biotch to my other friends because of it. I suppose those are the perils of travelling with people you don't really know well and I know better now how to handle it :)
On the a bright note, and most importantly, I did manage to get 4 packets of Arnotts Venetians to bring back. Yummm!
