Monday Feb 5th was an “at sea” day, it was also the day of the SuperBowl. We got to watch it at 10am, and it was an ESPN feed, not CBS, so we missed out on all the commercials. Tuesday, Feb 6th, we arrived in Melbourne pronounced by the locals as ‘Mel-bin’. We choose a morning Excursion, and it was quite an adventure just getting off the ship. First, you get into a big line with several hundred other people and recieve a sticker showing what tour and bus you will be on. Well, we finally get to the front of the line and are told they are not calling the “M” tour yet, which is what we had. So we grab a couple seats near enough that we will be able to hear them call our tour and also watch them to see what stickers they are giving out. After about 15-20 minutes we realize they’ve finished handing out stickers and still have not called us up. So we go up, only to have the same person tell us that they’ve already handed out the “M” stickers. Luckily they still had some stickers, but no apology, and we go join those hundreds of people in the Princess Theater waiting to disembark. They say it was a problem with customs, but we believe it was the crews confusion that made all the tours late getting off that morning, our tour itself started an hour later than was scheduled. So, get on board our bus, and head for our first stop, the Old Melbourne Gaol. Remember I mentioned we were an hour late? Well, our guide said we only had 5 minutes in the jail to look around. We basically bullied her into giving us 15 minutes. On the way to our next stop, it became obvious we had a beginner guide, because she kept on forgetting to speak into the microphone, and had to refer to notecards whenever a question was asked. Our second stop was at Fitzroy Gardens (<—workplace warning, page contains bird sounds). We started by having tea at The Pavilion Cafe, which is located next to a model of a Tudor Village. After tea, we walked over to Captain Cooks Cottage. After leaving Fitzroy Gardens we headed for Rippon Lea Estate. We believe this is where our guide came from as she knew everything about the place without needing any notes, and she made sure we had plenty of time there. Once we got back to the ship, we grabbed lunch then headed back off to the local supermarket, an IGA supermarket located at the end of the dock to load up on water. Bottled water on the ship was almost $4 for 1.5 liters. We weren’t the only ones with the same idea, since the shelf was almost empty when we got there, we grabbed the last 6 bottles. Back to the ship and off for Hobart.
