We lucked out coming from the terminal, there was a shuttle bus just pulled up so we got it straight in to town and jumped out at the hotel. Unfortunately, this was about 9:30am, and check in wasn’t going to be available until 2, so we left our luggage with them and headed off to check out the town. We started with a recce heading to the nearby McDonalds & going over the maps we’d brought with us, while enjoying some plastic coffee. On the maps, it didn’t look that far to the nearby shopping mall, so I hoisted myself onto the crutches again and we bravely ventured forth…
Several streets later, we finally made the mall, and luckily the tourist information booth was close to the end we’d arrived at. Ironically, though, we walked inside to hear their other client talking about Wollongong. Argh! Travel half way around Australia and STILL can’t get away from home! For some reason, he thought that the gong didn’t have stuff like a tourist information centre (it does) and thought Adelaide was so much better. We grabbed some more maps (pick the tourists), chatted with the lady behind the desk about why we were here (why is that always the first question?) and headed out. I staggered to a nearby bench and collapsed on it. The new maps were a good enough excuse, thought I.
Most of the rest of that morning & lunch were short bouts of checking out shops, interspersed with breaks at coffee shops or benches as frequently as I could find them. Boy was I looking forward to getting that room and putting the leg back up! We did discover a cute ‘installation’ of bronze pigs in Rundle St Mall – one of them was reared up onto the garbage bin even…
Finally 2pm arrived (ok, we started back a bit early, but by this stage I was VERY slow). We checked in, and discovered we were on the 17th floor. Grabbed the bags (had a brief moment of panic when we initially walked in since they weren’t where we’d left them, but they’d been put into an office) and lobbed into the lift. Pushed the button. Nothing. Doors closed. No movement. Pushed button again. Still wouldn’t light up. Finally discovered that the door card was needed for the lift as well – and a delicate operation it was too! Insert card, remove, wait 2 seconds and THEN push the button. Miss any step and start again. We did actually manage to get up to the room a bit faster than the trip down the street had been, though. Another minor success!
The room was huge (like, 20 foot ceiling at one end), the spa looked very nice (2 person) and the bed was just too good to resist. The leg went up, and I told him I was not moving for a bit until it stopped hurting so much. He put the TV on, and a little later decided to go out for a bit of a walk and check out the options for dinner. I kept going with my book, but then got tired of it and came out to watch TV. News came on just before he came back, and the lead story was “There’s been ANOTHER drive-by gang related shooting at Gouger St”. This is the street we’d been told was the restaurant district. Needless to say when he came in, I told him where we weren’t going for dinner…
(sorry, gotta go again, but I’ll be back with part 3, I promise!)
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