To Melbourne

I'd been fighting a cold or something most of the time I'd been in Brisbane, and on Sunday, it decided to hit below the belt. By the time it and I had reached an accomodation, I'd missed my original flight -- and the next one, too. So I got to sit at Brisbane Airport for a couple of hours waiting for seats on a flight to Melbourne, but I was luckier than one of my friends, who had to wait well into the afternoon before finally being able to leave. There doesn't appear to have been any reason for the heavy passenger load, but the planes certainly were full.

One I reached Melbourne, I took a taxi to the Tilba Hotel, which had been recommended to me by Liddy Neville and Eric Miller over dinner one night in Brisbane. I think it'll be worth the 10-minute walk to the Travelodge where my meetings are being held (I should note that the Australian Travelodge chain is completely unrelated to the US version, and that the hotels are perfectly reasonable standard business hotels); I am in a room with a four-poster bed, a ceiling fan (though the room merely has 12-foot ceilings, unlike the Conrad, which had at least 15-foot ceilings), and interesting antique furniture, and it's just a few minutes' walk from the thriving Toorak Road restaurant district. Oh, and there were some handmade gourmet chocolates in the room, but they didn't last long enough to be photographed. I hope to take a picture of the outside of the hotel tomorrow, en route to my meeting; I doubt I'll have much else to write about!

Tomorrow: A Day of Meetings

The trip, day-by-day: