After the slight mess up at the airport with our pickup it was a lovely surprise to have such a beautiful and funky hotel to stay in for the next few days. We are staying at The Hatton Hotel in South Yarra – it’s a lovely boutique hotel in a period building, on a nice quiet road, all close to the Melbourne CBD – perfect!

We spent our first day walking around Melbourne in cooler, overcast weather – quite a change from Perth. This is my second time in Melbourne – unfortunately I didn’t see much of it last time as I was too busy pining over a certain person called James Walker!

The city is much bigger and grimier than Perth so initially we were not too struck with what we saw but, as the day went on, Melbourne began to grow on us – we had a look around the main centre and then, as the weather improved we set off to the Botanical Gardens – mainly to try and find Wills some swings and slides. After having no success in finding somewhere ourselves I had to ask a local Melbournite. They kindly pointed us in the direction of the ‘Children’s Garden‘ – a fantastic set up for the little ones – it had mazes, secret walkways, a little stream that they could walk down and things to climb on and in – it was just brilliant! We spent at least a couple of hours there with Wills and he absolutely loved it.

After a bite to eat, we set off on the tram to St Kilda, one of the nearby beach suburbs. This gave William a chance to burn off a little bit more steam by running up and down the beach!

We returned to the centre and William was so tired out he fell asleep in the pram almost straight away – this  meant James and I could enjoy the rest of the Botanical Gardens ourselves. We ended the day with a delicious Thai meal at a local restaurant not far from our hotel.