Melbourne, 22nd April 2025

  Finally arrived in Melbourne after a three hours forty minutes.  A big day as we were awake at 4.00am staying at the Pullman Hotel at Auckland airport. Down at breakfast by 5.00pm. Left Auckland at 8.50am.  Wasn’t impressed with Air New Zealand’s old leased planes that they seem to use. Very tired and not up to their standard not a good look for them. Also the service wasn’t their usual. Why do they use these old planes? I think it is while they are maintaining their current fleet issues. Haven’t done a lot after arriving at our hotel Meriton Suites in King St which seems very central. It is a one bedroom apartment with full cooking facilities, dishwasher and laundry. Went out walking and we finally found a Telstra shop to sort out our Oz SIM card mainly for all the data I use for my blog, emails and WhatsApp. We are here in Melbourne for four nights before we pick up our rental car to start our Road trip. So after sorting out everything and picking up a few supplies, we took a few photos then back to our Hotel.  It’s now 7.00pm OZ time and starting to feel tired. So you can see not much happening but there is always a need to spend time sorting things out on arrival. We are now two hours behind NZ.

The Melbourne trams dashing around everywhere.

A peep looking up to the top of our hotel, tallest building. We are on floor 23 but we were asked if we could wait to get floor 33 but we were way too tired at this stage to wait around.

Our one bedroom apartment. Seems well equipped, all new looking.

Hope we build up to more energy tomorrow. Just need a good nights sleep.