Having seen the city centre for all of about 45 minutes on Saturday morning, and that was literally just a block around the train station, today I would be getting a chance to see round it a bit more. The journey to Marie and Jesse’s was a simple one as, like everywhere I’ve been in Oz so far, the public transport’s nice and easy to use. One train from Mooroolbark to Flinders Street station, then a tram a few stops up followed by a short walk.

The entire Luxford clan (Adrian had the day off work as well) drove me to the station to wave me off. A huge number of hugs were exchanged and I jumped on to be whisked into the city centre. Less than an hour later and I was at Flinders Street. The main tram stops there all have a couple of staff members walking around, so getting information on where to catch the tram from was simple.

The trams themselves are frequent and the signposting good, so I jumped off at the right stop and them immediately got confused. I ended up ringing Jesse and he walked to the tram stop to get me. Thanks, Jesse! He then directed me to their favourite local pub for lunch, but when I got there I found I’d missed the lunch break, so kept on walking until I reached Chapel Street. This is a long road lined with nice cheap shops and a gazillion fooderies of various descriptions. I was only peckish, so I settled on a ham sandwich and some milk after being trapped in a bookshop for almost 45 minutes by the woman who worked there. Very chatty. Too chatty. Of the three-quarters of an hour I was in there I was only browsing for about ten minutes!

I muched my sarnie on the walk back and got to the flat not long before Mari came in from work. Again, I’ve not met either of these people before having made initial contact through Couchsurfing.com. We had a glass of wine and a natter then headed out for dinner, back on Chapel Street. Mari knows the manager of a Thai/Vietnamese restaurant so we went there and I had a rather delicious beef dinner. And more wine.

The conversation was great, the next bottle of wine went down well and back at the flat I collapsed onto the converted sofa exhausted and slightly the worse for wear winewise!