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We
landed back in Melbourne late on 23 December 2005. On Christmas Eve we
just wandered around the city trying to get into the Christmas spirit,
which in temperatures hotter than we usually get in the middle of summer
in England is not as easy as it sounds! Especially when you are buying
picnic food and cool boxes to use on Boxing Day! Snowmen and winter
scenes really don't work in this weather, although we did like seeing that
Hull doesn't have the monopoly on tacky light displays on houses!
Christmas Eve evening was spent in a local pub where the beer was
freezingly good, but the warm spicy roasted peanuts were hot! They were
coated in what can only be described as a tasty, madras hot, seasoning and
were irresistible!
Christmas morning we had managed to secure a couple of Pork Pies and we
sat in bed, with the air-conditioning blasting out watching exactly the
same crap that they have on British television!
Lunchtime arrived and so did our date on the Colonial Tramcar Restaurant.
This is a very old, restored tramcar which takes you round the sights of
Melbourne whilst wining and dining you. For those of you who have been to
Colleys Supper Rooms in Southampton, it is like that, but on wheels! The
food was magnificent, the beer, wine and champagne were almost forced down
your throat and the atmosphere and views were fantastic.
After
we disembarked, before heading back to the hotel to send emails, photos
and make phone calls to the family, we popped into the Casino. We decided
our Christmas present to each other was to lose $50 playing whatever we
fancied. After seeing that the minimum bet on Pontoon was $20 and the
minimum bet on Roulette was $5 we decided the two cent fruit machines were
a better option! After we won $210 we decided to head back to the hotel,
chuckling like a pair of kids all the way! We have no idea what we did,
or how we did it, but we gratefully accepted our profit of $160!
Incidentally, no we have not been back since, we are quitting whilst we
are ahead!
Boxing
Day, up at the crack of dawn, Eski packed (Cool Box to you Poms!) and
tickets in hand off we went to the MCG (Melbourne Cricket Ground) for the
Boxing Day Test to see Australia versus South Africa! 71,910 people
attended and heard some completely tone-deaf muppet who had also quite
obviously not learnt the words to the South African National Anthem, make
a complete donut of himself! Everyone was cringing! Still, Ponting and
Hussey hit centurys
and there was plenty of entertainment along the way. So much so, that
Angela asked if I minded going back for the second day of the test, where
I finally saw Warne, Lee and McGrath doing what they do best! On the
cricket pitch that is!
On 28th December 2005 we
went to the cinema for the second time since leaving home to see "The
Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe." The day after we headed to the airport
to fly to Sydney where we had rented an apartment on Darling harbour for
two weeks! |