From snowstorm to Melbourne

We seemed to be leaving just in time. We thought we wouldn’t be seeing snow this fall but Manitoba weather did not let us down. When we left there was snow on the ground and it was snowing quite hard. Ray and Kay gave us a lift into Winnipeg where the snow hadn't arrived yet and we arrived with plenty of time. Michael met us for lunch and had managed to pickup our camcorder battery so hopefully you will be able to see the odd video clip on this blog.

Four planes and 26 hours later we touched down in Melbourne. The flight went extremely well. Our flight from Denver was late so we were late the rest of the way, although we made up a little time from LA to Sydney. We arrived into Melbourne around 11:45 am, Tuesday, November 6 and took about 45 minutes to go through customs and quarantine. The 14 hour + flight was the toughest: not so much with trying to keep Aiden entertained, he actually did very well with only having a few restless hours near the end of the flight. We encountered lots of turbulence during the flight, which caused a little queasiness for me who is prone to carsickness. So needless to say it was good to get our feet back on solid ground.


Rhonda (our in country leader) and Mike, a fellow from Parks Victoria were there waiting for us. We headed straight to our hotel and dropped off our luggage. From there we walked a couple blocks to an Italian pizza place where Parks Victoria graciously treated us to lunch.

We arrived during the Melbourne Cup, titled the 'race that stops a nation', so we were very lucky to have accommodation. The temperature was 18, which was quite comfortable. We were able to catch the some of the excitement on TV. It seems to be a lot of hoopla for a 5-minute horse race but then again it is a good excuse for a party. Around 4 pm we ventured out to look for a food market. We found a Safeway’s only a block or so away and were able to pick up a few essentials. The prices here appear to be a fair bit more expensive then at home. Bananas were $2.99/kg, a 2L chocolate milk was $5.20. And yes Sherry, they do have Kraft peanut butter here but we opted to buy the No name brand for $2.50 rather then the Kraft for $6.80. I’ll let you know if that was a wise choice. We came back to the hotel and had sandwiches for supper and were all in bed by 7:30 pm, crashing hard from the jet-lag.