Lost track of Legs: Melbourne

I know I'm skipping ahead. I'll try to fill in gaps later.

The last travel post had us in Canberra. When we told people we were going to Canberra, even Australians asked why? The real answer was I wanted to see the capital. The bonus answer was we visited the War Memorial, which TripAdvisor ranks as one of the top ten places to see. Will have to look for a link to confirm, or see if there is a caveat such as "war memorials," or "in the Southern hemisphere," but for now I'll leave that here. It was amazing. It is worth seeing.

We caught an early morning flight (6:35 am) to Melbourne so we could see a few highlights of Melbourne during our 10 hour layover, have some good food, worship, see a friend for lunch. Most of that happened. The friend cancelled on us, but we chatted the next day via WhatsApp. 

What didn't happen was the rest of the trip to Bali. Long answer short, our flight was cancelled due to volcanic ash and we decided to skip taking the flight the next day because we saw it could happen again, and even if we made it to Bali, the return flight might be cancelled. As they were not adding a flight, there was a possibility we would be trapped in Bali, which I doubted was as romantic and charming as that sentence could be. After trying to figure out where to go next, realized Melbourne was our best option.

We spent a night in a soulless airport hotel. We met a Lebanese bloke in the hot tub who suggested Don go to the emergency room the next day. That added to the decision to keep off planes for a few days.

Melbourne is a lovely city. It is probably one of my favorite in the world. But, it was not Bali. We spent two of our four days on excursions out of the city, one day at Urgent Care, and a day in the rain wandering about. The excursions where what I needed. A driver taking us places. Seeing new things. And escaping a city when my head was on a Balinese beach.

Excursion 1: Great Ocean Road

Excursion 2: Peninsula Spa (hot springs), followed by an hour in a cat café

Now we are at the airport heading to Brisbane to see friends. They have promised to make us feel like honorary Aussies for the weekend. We'll finish with two days in Sydney before catching our flight to the United States. 

The world changed since we left New Jersey. I don't feel as if we are returning home. T knows the rules of government this time. He is filling his cabinet with Yes People who have zero experience. The felon is not subjecting his closest cronies to pesky background checks. It will be awful, unless Republicans stand up to him. It is a sad state in our country that we are dependent upon Republicans becoming our reality check when currently we have no moderate Republicans in office. 

It will be bad.

Anticipate most of my posts will be political until the world rights itself again.