Melbourne

As noted previously this part of the cruise - Sydney onward to Auckland - was an entirely different cruise.  The same ship though - The Silver Muse - we just had to move to a different cabin.  When we booked the cabin for the first leg of the cruise - Bali to Sydney - the second leg was fully booked so we put our name on a wait list and sure enough in a few weeks we got the same category cabin we were in on the first leg for the second leg.  The butler (yes, all rooms on the Silver Muse have a butler) moved all our clothing to the new cabin for us.

Melbourne is another fantastic city and one which I'm sure we'll return to.

We did a walking excursion today...called Arcades and Alleyways..supposed to take you down some non-touristy place to show you where the locals really go.  Another mini ripoff...we'll learn one of these days just to go on our own or hire a ToursByLocals.com guide.

So a few pics from the alleyways and arcades walk.

There are three people at the bottom right of the photo below. The blonde lady standing behind the guy with a blue shirt lives just around the corner from us at our winter home in La Quinta, CA.  We'd never seen her before this trip and we've only seen her once since we got back. It's so strange that you have to go to the opposite end of the world to meet someone who lives so close to you.

Property is very valuable in these little alleyways. Our guide told us the Union Kiosk coffee shop below, which is about 6 feet wide and 10 feet deep, was purchased by the two people shown for around $300,000.  You have to sell a lot of coffee to break even.

This passes for art in one alley we visited.  

GRRRRRR IM CONSTIPATED....love it!

And like any big city there are the homeless.

Melbourne is a very modern looking city and they seem to be building like mad.

But still many older buildings exist.

We went up to the top of one of the tallest buildings and took theses shots.  There may be some overlap and repetition...sorry!  And I don't know why some of the pics have a bluish tinge.

Our ship can be seen just right of centre below.

A shot of the city taken from our ship. We are docked next to another cruise ship. It must be an NCL ship as that is the Norwegian flag flying.

And some sailboats who came to show us what they could do.

That's it for Melbourne.