When I wasn’t busy with my wedding duties, ha ha, I spent some time with my brother seeing the sights of Melbourne.

Melbourne put on a very good show of weather for us – so it wasn’t a hardship to just pick a direction and start walking. I certainly would have enjoyed just sitting out on the grass and enjoying the sun for a bit … if only I had had more time!

Day 1 in Melbourne was the Australian Open. I must say it was nice of Pauline to time her wedding around the first major tennis tournament of the year. ;-P I’ve never once been to my own country’s biggest tennis tournament but I’ve been to Wimbledon pretty much every year I’ve been living in the UK! … though I have visited Melbourne Park in the past to watch one of the Davis Cup rubbers against Spain. The Australian Open was very blue!!! … to match the sky!!

One of the very big differences I found between Wimbledon and the Australian Open was that the Australian Open had heaps of extra-curricular stalls so to speak – even including this water zorbing type thing, heaps of stores, Imperial Leather had this luxury lounge where all the ladies, and little girls, were getting pampered, and there was a Nintendo Wii station etc. Heaps of stuff to keep you occupied next to the tennis!

Stephen and I had only purchased grounds tickets so had to make do with hanging out on the outside courts. Saw one of my former favourite players Xavier Malisse, caught literally the end of Victoria Azarenka’s match, watched the number 6 seed Francesca Schiavone take a comfortable lead in her match and saw Jelena Dokic presumably cooling down from her loss earlier in the day. We couldn’t stay long though as we had our Vue De Monde dinner.

Day 2 was a bit of a wedding prep day but I squeezed in a catch up with an ex school chum Lucia – it has easily been seven years if not more since I’ve seen her. Very good to see her and hear how she was going. Then it was a Melbourne by night exploration … okay admittedly mainly a walk over the river to visit Crown casino. But still …

Day 3 saw us take a trip on the tram to visit St Kilda. Great day for it – very relaxing to have a late lunch, ice cream, take a walk by the beach etc. We found this really cute ice cream shop, trampoline. Not sure what drew us in – it was just very cute, and had places to sit outside on the sidewalk.

Then it was a whole heap of wedding stuff until our final day in Melbourne where Stephen and I had time for more ice cream on Lygon Street … after we had some lunch and visited Brunetti, a very popular coffee and cake place. One of the largest displays of desserts and macaroons I’ve seen ever!

I have to say a big thanks to Stephen for being so patient and being able to entertain himself whilst I was busy with wedding stuff. It was nice to spend some time with him considering how far I live these days. I’m going to miss Pauline, boy did I cry at her wedding when we were all saying goodbye, but hopefully it won’t be too long before I see her again.