Day 20

Today was the official bump out day. That means we only had to be at the venue long enough to get everything shut down and packed up. That makes for an easy morning. Of course, once again, we managed to wake up with a hangover. UGH! The Belgian Beer Garden seems to make that happen. An interesting side note from Day 19 was that we had a man steal a cab ride home by sharing a cab with us and then ending up "not having any Australian notes" to pay for his ride. That meant we paid a couple of bucks extra (well, I did) but I didn't really care. In the end, I knew I had been taken advantage of, but I didn't really care. He was entertaining.

Andy and I walked in to return our tuxedos. That took a few minutes and during that time, it started to rain. Of course, I have an umbrella I keep in the bottom of my laptop bag, but Andy was not as prepared (or as much a geek, you decide.) We decided to stop off in a Target to see if we could purchase an umbrella for him. It turns out the Target has three floors, and it took a bit longer than we wanted. We ended up almost 45 minutes later than we had anticipated. Oh well. It only took about 2 hours to actually pack it all up.

That meant the rest of the day was for Colleen and me without any work obligations. There was a pizza and beer party slated for later in the evening, but we had time. Our first stop was J.E.T.A. Opals. He is a very nice man. We got a very good deal on the matching pair of Colleen's earrings. We also purchased a small pendant for her boss, since once again, we did borrow some vacation early for her to be able to make this trip.

We decided to stop in the food court near the Big W for lunch. Not exactly close, but Colleen didn't want to try Korean food, and wasn't in the mood for Greek. We chose Burger Edge for lunch, and weren't disappointed. Once again, though, we missed an important detail and ordered two orders of chips, which ended up being about an order and half more than we really needed. Still, they had a variety of seasonings, and I had parmesan and oregano, while Colleen chose Mexican. Both tasty.

Dessert was at Bubble Cup Tea. It is pretty good stuff, though I haven't seen one in the states. I bet they have them where there are larger Asian populations, as it is an Asian franchise, and seems very popular with Asians in general.

I asked if we could stop back at the hotel and drop off the laptop bag. That, unfortunately, meant we didn't get to the Gaol in time to actually tour. Grr!!!! Oh well. Maybe next time, as we won't get back into Melbourne until well after it will be closed again.

Pizza and beer. Mostly beer just in people's rooms, since everyone was checking out of the hotel on Tuesday morning. Australian pizza is odd. That's really all I can say. It is pizza, and it isn't bad, but still. An example is capsicum, prosciutto, and black olives (roughly ham, bell pepper, and olives); another was chicken and avocado; and the most interesting was salami, prosciutto, prawns, and olives. They just don't have your standard pepperoni.

We retired early. Packing so that we could be ready for travel day. An early night, and mostly sober. Thanks for that.

Cheers!