18 Jan : Melbourne [By Bike]

The day started at 5am when Chris got up for swim squad and I got talked into it so I got up 10 minutes later. Let's just say that almost 4500 meters with a 2100 meter main set was NOT an enjoyable part of the vacation although it did feel good to get that "yardage" in with all the food and wine going on here. Fortunately it wasn't crowded because people were out doing other things and coach Ben was in one of his "nicer moods" according to Chris.

Site of Chris and Marc's "Swim Squad" workout

Of course, we biked TO & FROM the pool which is 3-4 km each way. All of this on the same day that we had scheduled a bike tour of the city - lot of activity AND biking. +Jill and Shelly went off to Crossfit. Jill to WOD and Shelly to check it out to see if she would like it. An early start for EVERYONE.

Fortunately, today was cooler than yesterday for the bike tour. Shelly joined us and off we went to meet up with the tour guide at 10am at one of the "Blue Bikes" locations in Melbourne. These things are everywhere and people can rent a bike from one and return it in another rack somewhere else in the city. There are smart phone apps to tell you how many bikes are available in a location as well as how many open spots are available in one when you are ready to return the bike.

"Pup-arazzi" in Melbourne CBD (Central Business District)

It turns out that our tour guide met us first to take us into the city center to get the remaining guests. This unfortunately led to two safety briefings as well as photo delays among other things before actually starting - we started at around 11:20-11:30. You can imagine what this did to lunch!

We started with a few nice spots by bike including a "pea patch", an inner city park for kids, and a great view of the sporting megaplex from a foot bridge that includes the Aussie Open, the sporting oval (the main attraction), and more.

Biking through Chinatown

She then guided us to (and through) a walk-only area with restaurants, shops, etc called Degraves Place. We had to walk our bikes single file because it isn't a big/wide place and it was packed for lunch &/or shopping. Once lane walked through would be fine, but she took us through pretty much all of them. Not easy and it took a while. Even after we got out of there we had to walk the bikes a lot. We then locked them up at one of the main market areas and walked around some more. It was beginning to look a lot like a walking tour. At this point I asked when lunch was: "40 minutes. Maybe an hour." 40 minutes later we hadn't stopped walking around in the market. This meant more like 40-60 minutes more of biking BEFORE lunch. The saving grace was a coffee and donut I got while we walked around.

Jill making friends. Where is Jarrett?

Once we did eat, it was actually good. We had Spanish tapas that were true and the place had a great rooftop bar to check out too.

We ended up seeing some cool stuff post "lunch", but we were worried about getting back in time to shower and get to our 7pm dinner reservation at Albert Street Food and Wine. So we broke off from the tour and took our bikes back to the closest docking station to the house.

"Snickers Bar" at Albert Street Food and Wine

Dinner was awesome there and the dessert was great. They had a "Snickers Bar" knock off that was truly delicious.