Our chauffeur is collecting us at 08:45 so a fairly early breakfast and last minute packing. He was here before the allotted time and it was the same cheery chap who picked us up from the airport on Friday.
The use of terminals in Perth seems to be very complicated and the terminal now used by Quantas for domestic flights is some distance from the international one. Apparently this resulted from some animosity between Quantas and Virgin.
We were quickly transported to the correct terminal and whilst we were warned it might be busy, it was strangely quiet and we had the quickest security check ever.
A couple of flat whites and we boarded our Boeing 737 to Melbourne. The flight was unremarkable and the 3 1/2 hours seemed to go very quickly but as a result of the time difference between Perth and Melbourne it was 17:30 local time when we landed. We checked in to the Intercontinental and then set off to find somewhere for dinner. The last time we were in Melbourne we had an excellent Greek meal on our way back from watching England play Australia at the MCG. Apparently, Melbourne has the highest number of Greeks of any city other than Athens.
We duly located a suitable restaurant and were able to dine outside in a very comfortable temperature. It was excellent and we were served by a very charming lady, who once we informed her we had lived in Greece for a short time, proceeded to tell us her life story.
We walked to the hotel and marvelled at the buzzy atmosphere in almost all of the streets. Restaurants were busy and there were lots of people on the streets. Melbourne has a population of ~2M and is a much older city than Perth. However, since our last visit here in 2010, there have been numerous skyscrapers built and the CBD has a very modern feel. It is a very cosmopolitan city with Italians, Vietnamese, Koreans, Chinese, the aforementioned Greeks and probably many others now residing in the city
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