Amazingly I survived getting up at 3:00 am, Dad picked me up and we managed to get checked in with plenty of time to spare and meet up with my Brother and his girlfriend. The flight over was all good and I watched the whole movie I had loaded onto my iPad – now what will I watch on the way home!

We are staying in a really lovely Victorian type villa in Ascot Vale, somewhere close to my sister.

The nearest shopping mall is in an amusingly named place called Moonie Ponds, where we found a Dick Smith store to purchase SIM cards for our phones. It’s a bit sad really how dependant I am on my phone, but we wanted to be able to call or text each other if we got lost etc and of course we all needed data for FACEBOOK.

Buying a SIM in Australia and making it work is not as easy as it was in America. It turned out to be a very stressful couple of hours, but one of the guys in Dick Smith was extreeeeeeemly helpful and went above and beyond what any sales person has ever done before and got them up and running – AWESOME.

Next we bought food from the supermarket and learnt you have to pay for a trolley and beer is sold in SLABS, so I now have a huge amount of beer to consume in one week – I’ll try my hardest.

Day 2, Sunday

We caught our first tram into the city and spent most of the day at the Queen Victoria Markets. What an amazing place – loved it. I tried all sorts of different food and bought loads of souvenir type stuff and by the end of the day we all had severe cases of “Shoppers Foot”.

Day 3, Monday
Today we drove into the city, parked at the Crown Casino which was not as easy at it sounds and walked to the Eureka Skydeck, the Southern Hemisphere’s highest viewing platform. We bought night and day passes allowing us back in later to see the lights at night time.

After that we walked along the river bank to Federation Square to book our day trip to the 12 Apostles and have a beer. Dad, my sister and niece slowly walked back to the Skydeck while my brother, girlfriend and I caught the free circle tram to fill in time till sunset, which backfired on us a bit, coz the tram driver got out for a 10 minute smoke break which meant we had to do the mad dash to get back to the Skydeck before all the pretty sunset had gone.

The view at night time was stunning and even tho the rest of my family decided not to experience the Edge, I did it on my own. The Edge is a glass cube that projects 3 metres out from the building with you in it, way cool.