Friday started nice and slow at Karins. Before noon we went to Melbourne Zoo and on the way we had a quick glance at all the sights. The zoo was interesting and it was fun to see all the native Australian animals up close. The birds in trees sounded like as if hundred trucks were reversing, and by the time we were finished at the zoo, we were quit annoyed with them. The koala and the wombats were cute though…

Afterwards, we went to Victoria Market - a very big market with everything from veggies to junk and cheap, fake stuff. Here we bought apples and honeycoated macadamian nuts. And after that we took the City Cirkel, which was a slow, educating, interesting, original, authentic, special, free tram with audioguide. Stepped off at Spring St and went to Southern Cross Station to collect our backtracker rail passes. The guys behind the counter were like night and day. The first one seemed like a little, bitter, ugly, Yemenitish jew and the other one like a tall, cheery, service minded teddy bear. The problem was that our travel agency, Kilroy, hadn't written all the necessary information on the voucher, and so we couldn't get the railway passes. In the process of solving this, the counter guys acted "good cop", "bad cop". Furthermore, Kilroy had forgotten to tell us we needed our passports to collect the passes, and we had left them at Karins. Luckily Marie-Louise had brought our Australia visa which said our passport numbers. So in the end, we ended up with the backtracker rail passes and a ticket for the night train to Sydney for the next day, Saturday. Actually the "good cop" on his way pointed out the luggage check-in and the platform where the train would leave from the next day.

Then we went to Federal Square to see the spectacular architecture by night and it was beautiful. From there we went home tired. Though, we still managed to be the only ones talking in the train on the 45 minutes long journey to Nunawading.