Melbourne, November 10: Planned Layover followed by Unplanned Layover

When booking our flight from Canberra to Bali the best option included a layover in Melbourne. Option one was a midday flight with a short layover in Melbourne and option two was an early flight with a 10-hour layover in Melbourne. 

I reached out to a friend and said if we do the long layover, can we meet for church and lunch. Robyn said yes, and so I booked the 6:30 am 90-minute flight, and figured out how to fill that time.

I should have realized the wheels were starting to fall off when Robyn wrote a couple of days earlier to cancel on us. Something had come up and she had to be out of town that day. I looked into rebooking with the later flight, which would allow us to sleep in and have a hearty breakfast at the hotel, but leave an awkward amount of time between when we checked out and when we needed to be at the airport. The change was cost prohibitive, so we stuck with the original plan.

Melbourne Airport has a bus that leaves for the CBD every ten minutes. It is easy to buy a ticket online and go. Having been there last year, I had a mental map of the city in my head, and a short list of things to do.

1) Stop by the Queen Victoria Market.

a) Visit a shop filled with old photographs

b) Buy a sweatshirt like the one Don loves

c) Have a crepe for breakfast from Kiki's Crepes

2) Church. Even though Robyn couldn't join us, there was nothing stopping us.

3) Lunch on Hardware Lane

4) Gelato

Then catch the Skybus back. Anything else that happened was bonus.

The layover worked out magically. Don was strong enough for all the walking I had planned. The shops were more or less like I remembered them, in the case of Kiki's she expanded from a tent to a food truck (good for her!). Unfortunately, Kiki and her husband were out of town, but her mom took good care of us.

Part of me wanted to buy a collection of random pictures from the shop and turn it into a book. When I saw the price of the individual pictures ($5 AUD each and I wasn't sure how many I wanted), I passed on the option. Still, it was good to see. May it fill me with inspiration to write a story based on old family pictures instead.

Church was good. Not as great as last year when the sermon was on Saint Hildegarde, but a regular service. Wesley Uniting Church shares the space with another congregation. I noticed the following week they were planning to have a joint worship service at a time that was different for both congregations. I wish our church, which shares space with Temple Micah, would do the same
sometime. It was unfortunately our friend could not join us, but after the election results, it was good to be worshipping at such an active church.

I remembered enjoying a restaurant on Hardware Avenue called Max's. We returned there and it was just as good this time. A few doors down is a gelato shop that includes bonus flavors each week. This week it was tonka bean. We had it with dark chocolate. Made us smile. 

As we walked back to the Skybus we noticed another Paddy Pallin. This time Don  did become a member. He also made a purchase. Members received an additional 20% off that weekend for Remembrance Day. As the lifetime membership only costs $10AUD ($7.50 US) it nearly paid for itself with the sale, and gave Don a conversation topic when he returned to work. 

We returned to the airport in plenty of time to check in to our flight, except that we could not check into our flight. An hour later Virgin Atlantic announced our flight was cancelled due to volcanic ash in Bali. HOWEVER, JetStar and Qantas chose to fly anyway. No room on those planes, of course. 

Yes, I would rather be safe, but I was still disappointed. 

Between Don's accident and the election, the wheels fell off our vacation. I was ready to say, just send us home. However, we still had plans for the second half of the trip.

At this point, I feel we entered a time warp. Because we were two of the twelve people who had a layover in Melbourne (as opposed to originating the flight in Melbourne) we were given a hotel room for the night and a voucher for dinner at the airport hotel. 

A friend asked what did we do next. I zoomed through the stages of grief, settling on pity. Woe is me. I am stuck in Melbourne. I want to be in Bali.

At the depressing airport hotel's front desk we called Virgin Australia to see what our options were. Sure, we could try again the next day to fly into Bali. I had visions of spending more time at an airport than on a beach. Best case scenario, we caught the flight 24 hours later and caught the flight to Brisbane three days later (instead of four days later). Or, we didn't make the next day's flight. Or we were trapped in the Bali airport unable to return. Cancelled flights have a way of compounding. At least in Melbourne we could rent a car and drive to the next location. Once we made it to Bali, that was no longer an option. Without an extra flight being added, I could not imagine how the people currently in Bali were going to return to Australia. Did we want to be part of that group?

Then we explored taking the refund as a credit and booking a ticket someplace within Australia. Almost any place would do. I was not interested in returning to Sydney or Canberra, but how about Adelaide or Perth or Tasmania? Our friend Andrew was making other suggestions from his cozy hotel room in Singapore. 

The truth was I felt defeated. None of the options were sliding into place. Airfares were extremely expensive because they were last minute. I would still need a hotel and itinerary. I was still tired from waking at 5 for the early morning flight. Don was tired because his leg was still swollen and it was turning purple.

We made the adult decision to stay in Melbourne. We kept the free hotel room, cancelled two nights in Bali, cancelled the flights to and from Bali (fortunately the next leg was also on Virgin Atlantic, so they gave us a refund) and headed to the hotel's hot tub.

Waiting in the hot tub was a Lebanese man wearing cargo shorts named Max. Max is a big guy sipping wine and listening to Arabic music with the lights off, and only the hot tub's blue light illuminating the room. 

You can bet I was glad Don was with me.

Max loves food. I got the impression he works in a restaurant. He gave me restaurant suggestions (which I did not take up because they were a drive away and I did not make notes). 

Max knows a lot about health care. He told Don he studied to be a paramedic. He looked at Don's leg and insisted he go to the ER in the morning to have it checked out.

Max is in town taking care of an elderly family member.

Maybe all of these parts of Max are true. Maybe none are. We did not swap information or become friends of Facebook. Don wishes he could have followed up with Max, but I was glad to leave him to the steamy hot tub

Dinner at the hotel was mediocre at best. The bar needed a lounge singer to complete the atmosphere. 

Yes, boo hoo, we were stuck in Melbourne for four days.