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We stayed that night at the airport and that’s where we woke up.

I got up fairly early and went back to the far away economy lot D to get my car.
You can see how long it took by the fact fashion changed on the trip…

I retrieved our luggage and moved the car closer to the hotel. The hotel was nice enough to let us keep the bags there for the day, so we set off the lead encumbered of the whole trip.

We parked at the Melbourne museum and set off into the city once more.

It was a nice hot summer day and there was lots to see.

We made our way to the Queen Victoria Market.

They’ve got a whole lot of stuff there. Lots of food plus other things too.

We had lunch there as well.

Then onto a free tram across downtown.

We stopped near Flinders station as I was getting low on Tim Tams…

Then off to the Treasury Gardens just off the tram line.

It was very nice.

I found it a bit strange they had a memorial to JFK, the US president killed when I was 13 days old.

I guess it’s nice they honor another guy from my home town, but still strange to find of the other side of the world.

Then we went across the streets to the Fitzroy Gardens.

They have a nice conservatory there. And it appears to be dedicated to one of their volunteers. Or, parts of it are. That’s nice.

Then we went over to Captain Cook’s house. I guess the house where he grew up was bought by someone in Melbourne and moved there from England.

Nice cottage. But, I can see why he went to sea too if there were a lot of kids in that cottage.

Nice gardens.

They let people try on costumes there from the 1800’s. But, we invoked "we only put on costumes when someone is paying us to do so" rule and passed.

They also have a miniature Tudor Village there.

No clue as to why. It’s just there.

My wife said I should Godzilla it…

They also have a "fairy tree". Again, no idea why.

They did have a small cafe there. We stopped for water and the treasury building tour was suggested. So, we crossed the gardens again and went there.

Interesting exhibits. Mostly about people who stole gold. Strange in a building dedicated to keeping it safe. But, why not?

I think every museum in Melbourne must have a suit of the Kelly gang’s armor.

They had some gold too.

The vaults downstairs were interesting. And, cool… It was about 33C/92F out.

But, the ceilings could have been taller.

Then we walked back to where the car was parked.

About 5 fire engines went screaming past us at one point. Never did find out why.

My phone says we walked about 16km that hot day.
But, the day ran out.
We brought our rental car back to the airport, collected our luggage from the hotel and went to the terminal.
We were still hours early. But, it was hot and we were tired. The terminal was air conditioned.

I did go to post cards to the god kids and my sister. The post box at the airport is about as far away as you can be and still be in the airport.

About this time my wife realized her American Express and bank cards were no longer in her wallet. No idea where they had gone in the previous 10 days of adventure.
The good news is it looks like neither were used by anyone else. So, they are cancelled and in the process of being replaced.
I still wish I knew where they went. But, we used my cards for most things. So, I can’t really even say on which continent they were lost…

As the sun was setting, the airline opened its check in. We were first in line.

We were close to the first on the plane too as we had seats waaaaay in the back…

I could tell that all that walking tired me out. I’ve been flying since I was 4 years old. I never fell asleep before take off and slept through on before.
The good news was it was the same kind of plane as the bad one we had, but a different seat arrangement, so not too bad. Certainly not what we had been dreading.

We took off late and were told we had 13 hours to make it up in the air. We didn’t.

So, we got to Qatar late.

But, it wasn’t foggy this time. I could actually see out the windows.

By the time we got to our gate, we could go through the security and wait some more.

It was the nice new plane with the cameras. Yay.

Again, we took off late. This time I didn’t sleep through it.

Due to the fog last time, I never managed to see the Persian Gulf before.

We flew out over Iran. Never expected to do that.

Although that’s where my boss and a coworker are originally from, I never realized it was so mountainous.

Many were snowy. I had not realized at the time this was foreshadowing.

Then over the black sea.

I had hoped to take a picture of Constantinople (or is it Istanbul…) As we flew over. But, by then it was cloudy.

I was told that even though the plane took off at 8AM local time and was going to last until 2:30PM local time, I had to close my window as it was a sleeping flight and it was keeping people awake. This confused me, but it was cloudy anyhow…

I decide to invest in wifi for the flight. As I took out my wallet to pay for it, the woman in front of me jammed her seat back so hard it knocked my wallet to the ground and really hurt my knee.
I had to use a flashlight and two cameras to find my wallet.

When the person next to my wife got up, we managed to fish around and get it off the floor.

As we got closer to home the clouds did not let up.

And, as we came in to land it was hard to even use the plane cameras as they iced over.

But, we were close.

Wait…

OK.

Wait…

It turned out they were plowing the snow off of the run way and kept saying "give us just a bit more time!"

I was happy when the camera showed the gear down as I knew we were really landing at that point.

Still less cloudy that Qatar that first day. Here I could see the ground a few hundred feet below.

The snow was really blowing.

Of course once the runway was clear they had to plow out our gate. We sat listening to the same repeated bit of elevator music for 45 more minutes. Able to see the gate but not get there.

And, given the traffic reports, it didn’t really matter.

It had been 33C when we left Melbourne. It was -6C when we got to Boston.

But, they cleaned out the gate and we parked.

Then it was just a question of being in the back of a big plane.

I have been spoiled by other international trips where we clear customs and immigration before we get on the plane home. That means grab your bags and go in Boston.
Not this time.

We got assigned to one line where every person in the line next to us went through before the first person in ours. Another line the offer went off for a 15 minute break and came back before we moved. We were sent to his line. Only one person in our line got through before we made to past.

But, we eventually cleared and headed out to the snow.