While in Melbourne I took Friday off, just to hang out with Meg around the place and have a relax before the big ride.

Little did I know it’d be a fun-filled, action-packed tour of insanity, all organised by your lovely tour guide Touristmeg!

Actually it wasn’t that bad, but we did pack a lot into a little day. We started out with breakfast on the porch at Jess’, then headed into town to visit the Queen Vic markets. We should have skipped breakfast, as the markets were chockers with nice looking food, I’ll have to organise a BBQ in Melbourne one day just so I can buy all that nice stuff!

After a leisurely lunch with Jess, Jeremy, James and other people who’s names starts with J .. at a nice pub in the city, we took a tram off the Zoo!

We’d planned to visit Taronga Zoo when we were in Sydney a while back, but it didn’t quite happen, we never quite had the time. So we couldn’t miss out again.

It’s probably ten years, or more, since I went to Taronga, and I remember it being pretty nice. But to be honest Melbourne beats it, or at least my recollection.

It’s a great layout, not too huge, so you don’t get super tired, but also nice little loops that are quite good at making you feel like you’re really in a jungle (the monkey section) or Thailand (the Elephant section) etc. I hadn’t really realised, but after nearly a week in the bustle of Melbourne, I really appreciated some open space, green grass and a bit of quiet.

We wandered around for ages, and saw most of the good bits I think. At about 5pm just before closing, the Lions went beserk which was awesome. I’m not sure what set them off, but they just started roaring and carrying on. It was pretty speccy, you would so soil yourself if you heard that noise out on the planes of Africa.

If you’re down that way I highly recommend it!