Marvelous Melbourne

Our first full day in Australia was great.  It happened to be a special Melbourne holiday as the Melbourne Cup was being held.  It was like being in Louisville, KY for Derby day times ten!  The whole city pretty much closes down and most everyone dresses up in their finest.  Men in suits and ties and the women decked out to the max with hats and feathers and high heels.  They call it the "Race that stops the Nation".

We started our day with a long walk to Victoria Market in hopes it would be open.  It is a huge market that has everything known to mankind.  Unfortunately, it was closed like everything else.  We decided to go to the Melbourne Museum.  They had a great exhibit about the Aboriginal people.  We ventured to Federal Square where there's a huge open area where people hang out.  There's bars and restaurants with outdoor seating.  We sat with this nice Australian gal that explained to us all about the Melbourne cup.  There was a huge TV screen where everyone watched the race. 

We met our Tour group for the first time.  There's about 40 people total and they seemed very nice.  We are on the "young" side, but I'm sure we'll fit in just fine.  We learned the hard way that these folks are pretty "timely".  For our dinner outing we were to meet in the lobby at 5pm.  We arrived about 5:04 (only because  when we reset our watches we must have  moved them slightly slow as we thought we were right on time)  Well, everyone was on the bus and we got on and everyone said "there they are" as if we were lost and they were looking for us.  We won't be late again, that's for sure. 

We had dinner on an historic Colonial Tramcar.  It was so cool.  It took us through the city while we were served a great dinner.  We ended the night at the Crown Casino and managed to play for about 4 hours and only lost about a $200.  :-)