Melbourne: Final Call

Melbourne worked very nicely indeed for our first stop. It was friendly, convenient, and there was plenty in the downtown core to keep us busy. There were other diversions in addition to the gardens and architecture, of course. There was a great deal of shopping available (which we completely avoided) and nightlife (which we also completely avoided). We did play with living statues living and non-living.



This lady was soliciting coins with carefully and slowly blown kisses to those who deigned to place a coin in her hat.



I am assuming that these gentlemen are anxiously waiting for a bus, so I joined them.

After four days, however, we were ready to move on. If our attention spans with all our locations is as short as was with Melbourne, we’ll be back home by the end of the month. At any rate, we were ready to get out of the city and find something more gentle, more rural, more national-parkey. The YHA hostel where we were bunked had an advert for a lovely looking YHA Eco-hostel at the town of Halls Gap in the Grampians National Park. Mountains and eco-hostels sounded perfect, so we packed up and headed out.

As we needed to travel to the Grampians via train, then bus, then bus again, we started out at Melbourne’s Southern Cross Station for our first real taste of travel-by-rail. We liked the station, and we liked travelling by rail even more – it is genteel, soothing, affordable, and generally very pleasant. Hopefully we’ll get the chance to do it some more.



See you there!