Stories From Down Under: Day 20

Jan 23 - 28th Day 20 - 26

Melbourne
(Beth)

Melbourne is an awesome walking city, and our first stop after checking in to our condo was dinner + tennis on the big screen at Afloat - a pop-up Mexican restaurant on the Yarra River just outside our door.

The next day, we watched our first live match at the Australian Open. What an awesome party scene with a selection of food stands (our fave Fishbowl) and a great selection of hats! Thanks to our friend Bud (who puts the Schultz in the Schultzeboomsisselbergs), we were treated to awesome seats inside Rod Laver Arena, and even saw the legend himself. (Two additional celebrity sightings I was particularly excited about - Eric Bana (!) just one section over, and Kat Stewart from the Aussie shows "Offspring" and "Five Bedrooms.") From our thankfully shady and seagull-proof seats, we watched Coco win her quarterfinals match. (Sadly, she later lost in the semis.)

sunny day at the AO - happy group!

The next day, we played golf at the famous Royal Melbourne course, thanks to another Bud connection. While Steven, Bud, and Elaine played with Will (Christo's college roommate), Larry, Karen and I had a really fun time with Huey, another friend of Will's. He was a great guide on the course and also knew quite a bit about the interesting birds of Australia.

Back to the tennis, we were confident we'd watch Alcaraz beat Zverev on his way to the finals. Sadly, it did not work out for Carlos this time. Karen needed some therapy after the match - but luckily Zverev was defeated in the semis by Medvedev.

Between match days, we wandered the beautiful city of Melbourne from the Crown Casino to Flinders Station and Queen Victoria Market - a giant craft fair with loads of Australia souvenirs and interesting food trucks. Our fave - the massive paella pans that took two hands to stir. Too bad we weren't hungry!

Another fun activity was catching up with friends. My dear friend Dianne, whom I met through our mutual love for Twilight, joined us for a very late dinner after the Alcaraz match. We had a blast catching up. The next day, thanks to my posting on FB, we were able to meet up with Keith Weisberg, one of Jeffrey's close friends, and shared some over-sweet espresso martinis with Keith and his lovely girlfriend Erica. Little did we know we'd see them at the last two matches and be seated right behind them!

My personal favorite outing was to the NGV (National Gallery of Victoria) International Museum, which hosted a very cool triennial exhibit with loads of modern works. We enjoyed reading the "Confessions" - four collections of giant post-it-note "confessions" mounted on each of the gallery's walls. There was also a tennis ball exchange, where you could leave your own "work of art" on one of the many shelves. I was delighted to accidentally wander into a gallery that told the story of Adam & Eve in paintings and text all around the room, starting with Creation and ending with the expulsion of the first couple from the Garden of Eden. The writer's mind never sleeps!

We were very sad to say goodbye to Karen and Steve on Saturday morning, but they have places to be and people to see... so we officially became the Schultzeboombergs, aka the Belaneybergs😆. We ventured across the Yarra for breakfast. Afterwards, we decided to try the scooters (I decided not to) and I caught Bud on video spinning around the little square in front of our condo. Elaine and I met the boys at the massive Queen Victoria Market where we quickly wore them out with our shopping.

That night, we FINALLY got to the rib restaurant we'd been drooling over all week, and the beef ribs did not disappoint! After dinner, we wandered to the women's singles final and watched a true champion in Aryna Sabalenka. Qinwen Zhen put out a great effort - and her fans could not have been more supportive - but Sabalenka was simply unbeatable.

One last breakfast with Bud and Elaine at the Hardware Societe, which is a lovely spot if you want everything AS IS (because French) - and also if you don't accidentally pour salt into your flat white.😕 We had to say goodbye to Bud and Elaine - and then there were TWO (sorta). We'd been spied the night before at tennis by our Boston friends Phil and Carolyn Perlmutter, and we made a plan to have dinner together before the last match.

Larry and I shmied around and checked out the casino. They have some weird blackjack-plus games we could not understand, so we kept our money in our wallets. We had a great pasta-ful dinner with Phil and Carolyn and walked over to tennis together. Medvedev had us all on the rails with the first two sets going 6-3, 6-3, but Sinner really came on in the third set (I believe I saw his coach say "Calm down," which seems to have done the trick, but don't try that one on me!) What an exciting match - and a great new Grand Slam champion. Congrats, Jannik!

Larry and I packed up and headed off to LA to visit Lindsay and Slim, officially concluding the reunion trip of the Sisselbergs to Australia.

Thank you for sharing our journey with us!