Preface - - While I hope you will enjoy following our Australian and New Zealand experiences with us, every time a new posting or new photos are added to my blog, you will receive a email notification. I understand this can become a nuisance--a real pain in the butt! You can go to the Off Exploring/stanjanie site and remove the email notification designation for your name. This will give you peace yet continued access to the site that will enable you to check-in at your convenience.
So this story begins . . . we are finally in Melbourne, Australia! First impression, it resembles southern California!! Golden. More to see though; more to learn. Amazingly, the long trip here was fairly tolerable. Honestly, this was the most pleasant international flight we have ever experienced. Virgin Australia is a great airline. Somehow we lucked out and were assigned seats in a 3-seat row that included an unsold seat. (Happy! Happy!) This enabled us to spread out a bit and even allowed us to sleep comfortably for a few hours. Still, a long flight over the Pacific with the best of service and accommodations is only just that, an almost unbearably long ordeal! Finally though, when many, many hours of darkness outside the plane's window finally began to melt into light, the sight was spectacular!! Very exciting! Needless to say, after 36 hours in the same clothes and 24 hours on a plane, about the only thing productive from this day after arriving at our hotel was a good long exploratory walk to exercise stove-up muscles, a bottle of Australian Merlot, some sliced chicken and cheese, and finally a hot bath! Off to Adelaide tomorrow to participate in their Fringe Festival that kicks off on our arrival tomorrow night with the big parade! We have planned Fringe events for the next three evenings . . . the big Fringe Parade, Spirit Festival and then, a triple magic show.