day 4 – cavity searches and green whizzing balls

we awake to a nice breakfast on the plane. enough to keep us going for a bit. we’re told that we’ll be beginning our descent and that the temperature in melbourne is in the 30’s and expected to rise to a balmy 38 degrees or something.....nice start to the trip!
anyways, we land, and are welcomed by the big welcome to melbourne sign in the airport and a single file line up through the sniffing police dogs....niiiice. ok. ok. so no big deal. we were warned by lots of people that australia is pretty strict at their borders, mainly because they don’t want any diseases from foods and plants coming into the australian environment, which has a lot of sensitive areas. so the dogs didn’t really surprise me.
we go through customs and are greeted by the official at the desk, as well as another guy standing behind him. they ask us a few basic questions, and are about to move on. then the officer standing up asks to see our travelling documents, our itinerary that shows our flights. i guess we look like illegal immigrants or something. well, whatever, we give it to him, he waves us on our way, wishes us a nice visit and we go on.

baggage collection is uneventful, and we head for the final check, through the x-ray machines for the food / plants etc. lady waves us to aisle #1, and strangely enough, more people waved through to #2 and 3. we get to the queue in our line, and start to wait....and wait....and wait. we quickly realize that #2 and #3 are moving significantly faster than ours, despite more volume. strange. more time passes, around 45 minutes or so, and we finally get to the front of line #1. we are escorted to the opposite side of the room, and are told that we are the happy winners of a full luggage inspection. so we go about dumping all of our luggage out onto the counter. the lady has a look through our stuff and not much there, so we proceed to put all of our stuff back into the bag. i realize that these are the funny moments to capture on tape, so i pull out the ol camera and fire a shot. boom. 5 guys on me immediately. telling me there is a fine for pictures in the airport. ok ok . so i delete the picture, and we go on our merry way, only an hour or so late from our expected arrival time.

debra meets us outside the restricted area, and already, we’ve got stories to tell. after a small detour in the parking lot, we get on our way out of the airport, and into the sunlight of melbourne, australia! ½ hr drive back to the city, and we get our first glimpse of home for the next week. debra and steve have done it up nice. i immediately notice steve’s dvd addiction, since his 6 level bookshelf is not exactly filled with books. nonetheless, we’re exceited and after a little unpacking, and getting acquainted, and a panic attack on my part due to the fact that i seemed to have misplaced my sunglasses (see previous post about shuffling in the airport), we head out for a walk to melbourne park, about ½ hr walk away.

as we walk, steve points out some of the good local coffee joints, since i have told him that i like my coffee. he points outs two that are within range of the house, and have some very good coffee. i make a mental note to go and check them out. we keep walking and pass a starbucks. i make a comment about how i love starbucks....steve looks at me like i’m some sort of alien, and casually mentions...nobody goes to starbucks here....ok, nuff said...there will be no more mention of starbucks while in australia.

at last, we get to melbourne park, enjoy a day of tennis. the pictures tell the story of the day, but the synopsis is: it was pretty hot out, and they stopped a lot of the matches because of the heat. but we got to watch a few matches, chill out on the patio for a bit. since kev and caroline were in rod laver arena, we decided to wait out for them, and then figure out what to do for dinner. they came out, and immediately told us that we should line up for the garnier samples that were being given out. now i should note, that the line up was about an hour long (literally), but in the end, you would end up with a free facial or massage, as well as a big package of crap from garnier. so based on the fact that we’re cheap bastards and we really had nothing better to do, we stayed around and got our free stuff. according to everyone else, the guy who was massaging me, must have liked me, since i seemed to get an “extra long” massage...must have been the sweat glistening off of my body or something.

we ended off the night watching some australian kid named healey get demolished by the russian davydenko. but it was fun because the stands were rammed full of aussies cheering as loud as they could as their man got his butt kicked.

so finally we left the park, and headed to grab some dinner. we went down to the area of downtown called Southgate, which is the riverfront area, full of street performers (buskers) and restaurants. we go around, and meet up with a few more of debra and steve’s friends, and search for a place to eat. most places appear to be closing for the night, since its pretty late at this point. seems strange to have kitchens in the main downtown area close so soon, but that is the culture i guess. we walk around what seems like a million places, and finally find a place with enough seats for us.

i guess maybe it was the full meal that gets us, but linda and i finally start to tire, and we realize that its time to head home. we bid our farewells, and grab a tram back to homebase in preparation for the next day...a leisurely walk through the dandenongs!

and oh ya, we took a few pictures that day. a modest 148 for the day between the two of us. but cmon, its our first day in town, we're just getting warmed up!