Melbourne

Today we went to Melbourne. We get up at 5 o’clock a.m. (it is jet-lag, not good will).

We took a McHarry’s bus to Geelong and a V-line train to Melbourne.

At Melbourne station we went to the tourist information point. The lady was incredibly kind and she speak a perfect slow English (we understood all she said at the first try).

She gave us a map of Melbourne and some tips on what to do. We asked about a car rental and she phoned to three car rental for us and, when she found one car she gave me the phone.

The city is great: very old building merged with skyscrapers (like in Frankfurt, but incredibly much more), department stores which occupies one or sometimes two blocks, an incredibly narrow streets full of coffee shop at the end of whom there is a Galleria like the one in Milan.

Federation Square is astonishing, amazing. It seems to me as being both in an impressionist picture and in an Esher pictures. Buildings has unlikely shapes and incredible colours.

Then, for lunch, we went in Chinatown. We tried a restaurant, but we were not satisfied. Perhaps we would like more an Australian steak.

Being a little bit tired, we decided to take the tourist bus.

We get off at the Shrine of Remembrance. It is designed like Alicarnasso’s Mausoleum (awful, here and now), but inside is very touching.

Then we went to Royal Botanic Gardens, but there was really too much fly, so we taken the bus again and went to Hertz to take the booked car.

They also were very kind (and cheaper than Italy): they asked us where we wanted to go, than gave us a lot of map with tips on how to go from Melbourne to Barwon Heads and on how to get to the Great Ocean Road.

The man who gave us the car was a little bit worried: “Have you ever drive an automatic?” “Yes, of course” “Whew, Italians have a lot of problems with automatic”.

Of course. We said we are poets, saints and sailors, not drivers. If we were drivers we wouldn’t need Schumaker or Massa to drive Ferrari.

Driving in Australia is not so difficult: they have signs everywhere to say. KEEP LEFT, and In Australia drive on the left. And I wonder: if they would drive on the right, how much money they can save on road signs?