It was departure day for our flight from Christchurch, New Zealand to Melbourne, Australia.

Question #1: Why do all of our flights leave ~6am? Part of that may be the distances we're flying, but honestly! Every flight except the ones to & from the US have been 6am-ish. And when it's international, like today's, the airlines want us at the airport three hours ahead. So yes, we were at the airport at 3am. We should have just found a good party and not slept. Then again, no.

There were gate agents at 3am to check us in, and it didn't take long. After that, security didn't open until 4. With forty-five minutes to kill, we roamed and found this large scale chess board. Neither of us has played for decades, and with four hours of sleep, fumbled along. But it did make the time pass quickly.

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The flight to Melbourne went fine, and the airport is a breeze to get through at 9am on a Sunday. Once at the rental car counter, we ran into a pleasant inconvenience. They did not have the basic sedan I had rented, big enough for us & bags. In fact, they didn't have any sedans. The agent asked if I would take an SUV, to which I replied that was fine, so long as it had enough room for us and our stuff.

Then it got fun. The manager told her two stalls that had acceptable vehicles. Trouble was, those stalls were empty on the computer. When he looked outside, they were indeed empty. Back to looking, then the manager told her a stall to use. Her respond to him was and doubting "Really?!". He affirmed, stating "It's a one-way rental to South Australia & it's got the plates. Sure."

And that's how we would up with a BMW X3M high-performance SUV in place of a Camry.

![IMG_5279.jpeg](https://files.peakd.com/file/peakd-hive/bobbyb58/Ep3dmhpiZic24zGcUMvrbFARcBYadZvLc2TTNNCNbuYZsa4DzSrqaWBmBx9SZfVmTyj.jpeg)

We drove to the Hilton DoubleTree in the CBD (central business district) to drop off our bags and do some sightseeing. Easy nav, easy route, and then: no parking. We drove around the block, hoping cars entered from the back. Nope!

We drove back the the front, parked across the street (because there was no apparent place to park in front) and called the front desk. We were told to double park to have the bags unloaded. Parking was a block away in a $30/night structure, or $30 every time we re-entered, whichever came first.

This did not accommodate our disabled-person sightseeing plans, which had us going in and out twice that day. It also created havoc for a travel partner that was not feeling well from little sleep and discomfort.

Time for Plan B. We dropped off the bags, and drove off to a gluten free patisserie. A gluten free patisserie! A flaky crusts, indulgent flavors, beautiful baguette and decadence chef-owned place. We bantered, we tasted, and we compared his creations and mine for well over two hours. All stresses of the day melted away.

![IMG_5301.jpeg](https://files.peakd.com/file/peakd-hive/bobbyb58/245w6v1zY9eobXT7vJQmWKzk2RpWLrCXuGfz2vuWrebw8BoDt92wYp2qBPgjYoDPgrsj1.jpeg)

After that, it was back to our hotel. The view from our room window looked upon Flinders Street station, the second busiest station in all of Australia and a classic piece of architecture.

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I settled my companion into the room, then walked to the Greek restaurant we'd planned to drive to. In hindsight, the public transportation in and around Melbourne is so good that we could have waited on the car until the next day. But then we probably wouldn't have would up with our BMW.

The area was lively and fun. I had to walk through Chinatown to get to the Greek place. Since our food would take 20 minutes, I went back to a pick-up basketball game in an alleyway, killed time playing, then nabbed dinner for a quick night.

All in all, I would return to Melbourne anytime.

[//]:# (!pinmapple -37.81777 lat 144.96558 long The Melbourne CBD d3scr)