The plan was to go to Victoria market. I never made it, but Michael did. He will now describe his experience and then you will understand why I did not go.
Actually, it was a very enjoyable excursion. I left the ship and walked about a quarter mile to where the bus was to pick us up for transfer to the city. That bus was about 20 minutes late and completely full by the time it departed. It was about a 20 minute ride into the heart of the central business district. From here it was about a half a mile hike to the Melbourne train station where I intended to pick up the tram to Victoria market. I got there and after waiting about 20 minutes with no tram in sight, I checked the monitor and found out that the tram wouldn’t be there for about another hour and a half. Apparently this is an old tram they run on this route, and most of the vehicles were out of service.
So me and a few other folks from the Neptune decided we would have to walk the 13 blocks up Elizabeth Street but found that there is another tram that ran on Elizabeth Street that would drop us right at the front door of Victoria market. If Beverly hadn’t mentioned it before, Melbourne has the largest tram service of any city in the world, so it’s extremely easy to get around. We have been to Victoria market before but I had forgotten how huge it was. You enter through probably the most beautiful fish and meat market I’ve ever seen in my life with incredible delicacies beautifully displayed. You next walk through what they call the delicatessen, which is all kinds of food items, and then you reach the retail items which is what most people really go there for.
Of course, I had to walk up and down every aisle to find a T-shirt for both Beverly and myself and I was successful. I managed to actually buy Beverly a T-shirt that she really liked. Amazing! Now it was time to return to the ship. I’m an expert on the Melbourne tram system now, so it was easy to find the tram down Elizabeth Street back to the train station. I actually got off one stop early so I could find a restaurant and after passing no end of the Chinese, Vietnamese, Indian, and various other restaurants, I settled on Subway. Go figure!
So now it was another half a mile or so through the train station over the bridge back through several buildings to pick up the shuttle back to the ship. All tolled, I walked a little over 3 miles today and boy am I feeling it.
It was interesting when we arrived back at the ship. Our next-door neighbor, a P&O ship, was loading passengers, and I have never seen a more disorganized process in my life. Picture about 2000 people standing single file with their luggage, in a line a mile long as it started to rain. And all this was for a five day cruise to kangaroo Island. Forget it!
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| Fish market |
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| Borrowed from Patty Harrison |
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| Borrowed from Patty Harrison |
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| Borrowed from Patty Harris |
So here you have it folks, I’m (Beverly) not doing a whole lot of walking right now as the pain in my right leg has been increasing. So I went to the pool this morning to just try to relax the body, but the water was really cool to me, but not to Michael, who went in the pool later after he got back from the market and thought it was wonderful. Actually, we have a running discussion on the perfect pool temperature and I think 2° more than what he likes is better.
We departed Melbourne at 9 PM tonight. The wind is blowing rather hard. We might be in for a bit of a bumpy ride tonight.
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| Today: sunny this morning |
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| Today: this afternoon rain storm |
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| Tonight |