Melbourne & Australian Open

Melbourne was hot. Like +40 degrees when we went there. But it was also cold. It got really cold at night time. We were freezing in our shorts a few nights we stayed out until late. We met with my parents who were also there and stayed with them in their apartment which they had rented for their stay in Melbourne during the Australian Open. 

Australian Open was a great event. A really relaxed and fun sportsy event (with weirdly non-sportsy food selection ;). We got to see great matches and great tennis. Loved the experience.  

We also got to see Serena and Venus Williams doubles game. It was so cool to see them live! And we got good seats too. If you look carefully enough, you can find their mum in the audience picture on the left ;)

It was +40 when Jarkko Nieminen played one of his matches (he lost that one - boo). We tried to stay in the shades to even survive just sitting and watching - must have been quite hard to play in that heat!

We spent a few evenings in the Federation square downtown and watched games from the big screen they had put up for the tournament. The tournatment had taken over the whole city basically ;)

St Kilda and South Yarra were my favorite areas of Melbourne. They were full of old pretty houses like this. 

We used the trams to move about - their Myki card system was so messed up that we never really got it. Please let me know if you figure it out! We topped our cards for lets say for a day and they advised us to touch it on the screens when you enter the tram and touch it off when you leave. We did so and after a few rides the card was empty even though we had bought a whole day card. When we asked how it could be so - we had to top up again like 50 cents to get it work again and noboby could tell us why. Still gets my fumes going when I think about it! ;)

In St Kilda Beach there was a fun atmosphere...

... and a lot of beachgoers even though it was windy. 

St Kilda and South Yarra were also full of nice little restaurants and bars and cafés. But my favorite drink turned out to be strawberry milk from the closest grocery store. 

Oh, and in Australia they call Mc Donald's Macca's and for Australia day Mc Donald's had a campaign where they had changed the name of some restaurants to Macca's - "There's only place in the world where you can get maccas!" And for that reason only we had to go and get one burger - a macca - from there ;). And they had lovely frozen drinks in their menu too - I loved the frozen Fanta.  

Tales from our trip to Tokyo, Australia, New-Zealand & Singapore

Tokyo - city of lights and color
Tokyo - <3 SUMO
Tokyo - old & new
Tokyo - Tsukiji fish market
Melbourne & Australian Open

After Tokyo we flew to Australia - and first to Melbourne to watch the Australian Open Tennis tournament. Our experiences are summed up in the pictures and picture texts above.