Melbourne Ghetto?

We are in Melbourne!! We are staying at the Harbour Escape Luxury Apartments. We were told to call the apartment manager when we arrived at the airport that he was not on site and would meet us there.  So as the name suggest, I am expecting some really nice "luxury" apartment.  The cab pulls up to the address that we were told and Heidi and I did a double take. The buildings were plain tan brick and the balconies were all rusted out. I have to admit I was not a happy camper because I recalled the picture from the internet looking much nicer....well at least the inside of the apartment. There never was a picture of the outside and now I understand why.

The apartment manager was not there when we arrived and the cab driver was afraid to leave us there. He stopped the meter and told me to  go check and make sure it was the right place. I called the apartment manager and sure enough we were at the right place. So the cab driver left, but left us his phone number in case he needed to come back for us. So there we sat on the sidewalk with all our bags. Luckily it was only a few minutes.

You know how they say, don't judge a book by it's cover? That saying is very true in this case.  Apparently the guy spent some time and money renovating the inside of this place and it is really nice! Plenty of room for the 2 of us and it even has a washer and drier inside the apt. It is perfect. And it turns out we are only one block from a tram stop!

Speaking of trams. So...since we are in an apt. and the there is no management onsite there really isn't any place to go for information or maps like you can at a hotel. We had one little map that told us where the tram was and where a grocery store and bottle shop was. So our friend had told us that the tram was free so we hop on and head somewhere....turns out it was towards the city center. We noticed that people were getting on and scanning a card, but we didn't see anywhere to buy anything and the driver was behind plexiglass so you couldn't pay him. So we ended up taking it all the way to the city and we just got off. We finally saw a sign where we could by a metro card in a Pharmacy (Chemist as they call it) and asked the guy what we needed to do. So yes apparently we needed a metro card to ride the tram. Oopps....I guess we got us a free ride.

We walked around the city for a while trying to find a visitor center so we could have some sort of info. We finally found it and hit the mother load with brochures. I think we have every brochure in the place, but Heidi says we'll recycle them so it's okay! :-)

While walking around we found a Krispy Kreme!!! Yes a Krispy Kreme in Australia! Ah a taste of home! Of course we had to get some. While there the guy behind the counter asked if we were American. We said yes and told him we were from Raleigh. Turns out he had family from North Carolina as well. We talked to him for a while. I think we made his day! :-)