Melbourne AUS Feb 12th

We arrived last evening in Melbourne Australia for our first stop in our next country. It is described as the most British city in Australia.
Our morning excursion was to the Royal Botanic Gardens. Melbourne was designed to have a large number of green garden spaces within the city. We toured the gardens with our group and then as planned, we left the group to explore the other gardens. The original tour was only about 1/4 of the Botanic Gardens, so we walked all around the rest. Then we walked and visited the Victoria Gardens and after that the Alexandria Gardens.
When we left the final garden, we visited a knitting store to get me some needles and yarn that Scott picked out so that I can knit him a scarf.
Then, as usual, we found a pub. It is the Young and Jackson. A local on our trip recommended it and the beer was great - as usual.
The plan was then to ride the historic wooden tram around the free zone in the city center. We found the platform and time. We saw the tram coming and noticed it had the sign 'Out of Service' on it as it flew by.... So, plan B was just to walk to our lunch pub, The Mitre Tavern. It is the oldest pub in Melbourne. Lunch was Fish and Chips, Indian food and of course, local beer.
Since we still had time, we booked an hour long river boat cruise through the Yara river that runs through Melbourne.
Our last thing to do for the day was a Penguin watching boat trip at sunset. The boat took us out into the bay and we watched the Little Penguins swim in from the ocean and perch on the rocks.
It was a long day. 10.5 miles of walking and 23K steps! Now off to bedRead more