Day 1

The first day in Melbourne was great. The plane ride was slightly cramped, the guy beside me slept leaning towards me while the woman in front pushed her seat back as far as it would go.

I survived the mission of getting my very heavy suitcase (it even got an orange label) heavy handbag, heavy laptop case and two coats from the airport to the tram, and then the tram to the back packers. They let me check in 2 hours early which I was very happy about and then I took off to the parade. The parade was awesome, everyone who I know was there almost, plus hundreds of people I don’t know. I was astounded with how many Jews there actually are, and I only saw a very small portion. After the parade we went to the carnival, I had a hamburger and then decided I was too exhausted and it was time to go to bed. Unfortunately I was also too tired to sus out the bus system so instead of sleeping I took myself on a full walking tour of the Jewish suburbs. I now know where almost everything is, and how to get to just about everywhere except my back-packers. The lessons I have learned so far are: Melbourne’s malls require googling to find, if I want to hear Hebrew and find meat Balaclava is the place to go, Melbourne is very big, if you turn left at McDonalds you will not find Coles (nor if you turn right, go straight ahead or anything else for that matter), Caulfield is a long way to walk from St Kilda and finally overseas call centre people get a little titchy when it is the third time you’ve rung them in the space of 20 minutes.