Meeting up with the relatives

Tuesday 1st August - Arrived at Melbourne nice and early in the afternoon and grabbed a taxi to Jen's cousin - Julian's - address. Julian lives in North Melbourne with his partner - Michelle.


Both are out at work when we arrive, but the massive flat screen TV and stereo are on and a map is left for us to show us where we can go.


We wandered off into the city which is a walk of about 20 minutes. Calum has just about had it with walking everywhere and so we go into a store called 'Target' and manage to get Calum a new scooter to replace the one we left at Perth.

Melbourne centre reminds us a bit of Kingston on steroids. It's a huge shopping centre with lots of little covered Malls off of the main roads. If you want it, you can probably get it here.

Back to the house and Michelle arrives home followed shortly by Julian. Both are great and make us feel at home right away. We have a Nando's takeaway and spend the evening chatting. Mostly about Jen's and Julian's relatives but all very interesting! Calum fell asleep on the settee and eventually Michelle and Julian went off to bed leaving Jen and Les to look at old photos before finally going to sleep on the large inflatable 'put me up' bed in the lounge. Julian's house is really nicely done, with two balconies including a rooftop one!

Wednesday morning and we are off to a restaurant called La Camera, Southgate (near the river) to see Jessica Cobbett who works there Monday to Fridays 7.00am to 3.00pm. Eventually we arrive to surprise her when we call in for coffee:


La Camera is on the 1st floor in the above picture!

Well guess what, Jess doesn't work on Wednesdays! You travel 12,000 miles to see someone and they're not in. Typical!

Never mind we have a quick coffee and go on a wander round the city to take a few photos. What is most striking is the ability to get around the centre by tram. Tram's are everywhere:


On the way back to Julian's we found a huge indoor climbing wall and Calum went for a climb.

We're off out for dinner tonight and then first thing tomorrow it's a plane to Gold Coast airport for sun, sea and sand (not that it hasn't been great weather so far, even in Melbourne it's been in the 20's - not bad for winter!).

More to follow:


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