Thursday 7th March 2019 - Melbourne

Our last day with Viv, and again she had it planned for us! First it was a visit to the MCG where she had booked a tour for us. For those who don’t know, this is both a cricket stadium and the home of Collingwood Australian rules football team, which Viv is an ardent supporter of! This stadium stands alongside the Rod Laver arena and other sports stadiums, and the history of the site goes back to the 1956 Olympics which were held here. This stadium has had a number of revamps and currently holds, at a maximum, 100,024! That includes some standing and the seating is for 95,000. It is an impressive place! Currently it is between the 2 seasons and where the cricket squares are is being prepared for the football season. They actually remove all the cricket pitches between the wickets, each as a whole and transport them overnight when there is no traffic, to a local park where they are tended carefully ready for the next season!

It was a really interesting tour, and of course we were allowed to touch the hallowed turf, just not stand on it! That is somewhat reminiscent of The Emirates tour! Part of the tour took in the media centre where Geoff decided he would look the part!!

Do you think he looks like a coach being grilled by the media?!!!

Lunch was the next call, of course already booked and the venue was a restaurant on the bay in the suburb of St Kilda! If any of the Gillies are reading this they may be interested to know that St Kilda is a very nice suburb! We were treated to a lovely, leisurely lunch and afterwards taken to our hotel in the city. It is hard saying goodbye to friends when you don’t know when you might see each other again. There had been lots of reminiscing, reminding us that we are getting older!

We checked in then managed a walk to get our bearings for tomorrow. Then I needed to update our blog! I will close today’s edition with a view from our 25th floor room!