Day 1: Melbourne

Well, we love Melbourne. We’ve been here for a day and we’ve decided that we could live here. The job situation for Mary might be rather difficult though; we’ll have to see what’s available. Melbourne is a great walking city, with tons of parks, good sidewalks, frequent and accessible public transportation, and small enough to cover by foot in a reasonable amount of time. Plus there are huge bike lanes – at least 3 times the width of the things Boston calls bike lanes.

We arrived in Melbourne at 11:30, very well rested and refreshed after what seemed to be a much shorter flight than the 14 hours it was. The $1200 extra it cost for business class for all of our flights looks to be a great investment. We were wined, dined, and then put to sleep on nearly horizontal chairs; the experience starts to go to your head pretty fast, as you quickly start wondering how anyone travels economy for such long flights.

The entire flight was uneventful, except for when the lady in front of us in the inspection line for transferring Sidney to Melbourne was told she’d have to throw away $500 in perfume she’d just bought since she was over her total liquid allowance. Oh, and the guy who was in my seat (during the Philly to LA flight) and refused to move (and was rude about it) – the stewardess straightened him out.

We took a cab from the airport to our hostel (no great public transportation options from the airport), checked right into our room, cleaned up, and went out walking. We did a loop around the Central Business District (downtown), probably 6 miles or so, and hit a lot of the major parks, plus got a feel for the layout of the city. Tomorrow will probably be a museum day – they were closing when we arrived today. We’ll probably crash early tonight, between some small amount of jet lag, plus being tired from all of our walking.

Our photos from today are on Picasa.