Cain Manor

We were walk­ing along Hay street yes­ter­day (the 26th), when we saw a bike shop adver­tis­ing bike rentals. We popped in and briefly spoke with a lovely gen­tle­man about our desire to bike to the Indian Ocean. He said it was a leisurely 2 hour ride, and we fig­ured we could do it in 90 min­utes. We were wrong.
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We flew into Perth some­what early in the day — around noon. On the way into town, we were stopped by a tem­po­rary block­ade. While wait­ing, there was a For­mula race car that went down the streets that were closed off from stop­ping us. Oddly enough, we never saw any other evi­dence of For­mula cars, or races, or any­thing else. There were quite a few pho­tog­ra­phers for the cars short jour­ney, so they knew some­thing about it. Our hotel was on Hay Street, which was the main shop­ping stretch in Perth. After check­ing in, we walked down a side alley and found a sushi restau­rant where we ate a small lunch. We then walked along the Swan river, found a place that rented bikes (see Bik­ing to Fre­man­tle) and took a short visit to the Perth Mint (but didn’t pay $12 to go in.) We then bought some booze, had an early din­ner (5:30 — too late for old peo­ple spe­cial, but too early for any attrac­tive peo­ple), and turned in kinda early.

Mel­bourne was a short flight from Syd­ney. We had trans­porta­tion to our hotel, and arrived early in the evening. Our hotel was quite nice and quiet, which was a change from Sydney’s noisy street. We walked to a restau­rant called Rare Steak­house, which I’d guess to serve steak. It was a very nice place, but ser­vice was a bit odd, espe­cially given this was a mod­er­ate to expen­sive place. Our waiter was French, and didn’t speak great eng­lish. When I asked what vodka they had, it started a minor dust up from the wait­staff. First he looked con­fused, then he walked back to the bar, started look­ing around, then some­one else came over, they talked a bit, and kept look­ing back at our table. When he came back with­out much of an answer, I just said “water, thanks”, which only caused him to look more con­fused, but then we were able to order. Even­tu­ally another woman came over and told us our waiter was new, and in train­ing, and apol­o­gized for the trou­ble. When I asked her what vodka they had, she knew, and I ordered some­thing on the rocks. She ended up being our wait­ress for the rest of the night, with the french guy bring­ing us the occa­sional water or bread.
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As our time in Mel­bourne was lim­ited, we tried to find a few of the high­lights to do. We’d talked about rent­ing a car and dri­ving this Great Ocean Road, or maybe dri­ving from Mel­bourne to Ade­laide, but that seemed too risky. We’d had some issues with fly­ing by the seat of our pants, and fig­ured more plans were bet­ter than fewer.
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We finally made it to Syd­ney proper, and we are get­ting closer to mak­ing our trip into a vaca­tion.  Jus­tine was feel­ing a bit bet­ter in that we had a plan, and we were finally in a place where we weren’t wor­ried about get­ting stabbed by a hobo.    We were stay­ing at the Vic­to­ria and Albert Court B and B on Vic­to­ria Road in Pott’s Point (appar­ently there are many Vic­to­ria Roads.  Ours was in Pott’s Point.) The room was nice, but it was fac­ing the road, which we’d find out later meant it could be quite noisy at night.  Con­sid­er­ing the work that went into get­ting this place (I guessed, more or less), it ended up being a great loca­tion.  Take a right, and go a block or two, and down a long stair­case, and you were on the water­front, near the rel­a­tively famous Harry’s Cafe De Wheels at Cowper’s Wharf.  Most of the food and travel shows I’ve seen on Syd­ney end up eat­ing here at least once (Anthony Bour­dain, Saman­tha Brown, etc.)    From there, it was a short walk to the Royal Botan­i­cal Gar­dens, and then the Opera House.  And the Opera House is the true heart of Syd­ney, and once there, many of the tourist things you’d want to do are close by (The Rocks, Har­bor Bridge, etc.)  Once we got there we made a big loop from our hotel to see many of those sites listed above.  On our way back, we walked by a “Pack and Send”, and won­dered if they could help us bet­ter than the Cas­tle Hills branch.
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