Australia & Ashes 2017 - 2018 - Day 34 - 26th December

Day 34

It's 26th December and we are going to the famous Boxing Day test match at the MCG.

So it was up early this morning, ready to set off to Melbourne.  Kylie dropped Mike around at 4.45 and Alfie then drove us to the Sydney Domestic Airport where we caught the 6.30 flight to Melbourne.

Sydney departures

I managed to sleep for the whole of the one and a half hour flight and in no time we seemed to have arrived at Melbourne airport.

Melbourne arrivals

We grabbed a taxi and headed off to the Grand Hyatt hotel to meet Richard who was joining us for two weeks and to leave our cases while we all went to the cricket together.

Entrance to the Grand Hyatt

After we had met up with Rich and left our cases in his room we were to wait outside for friends of Alfie and his brother James. their names were Bill and Hella and they had their lovely daughter, with them. When they arrived we set off for the walk across the bridge to the famous Melbourne Cricket Ground.

The MCG top left with the blue courts of the Rod Laver Arena, Home of the Australian Open Tennis, in the foreground

We settled in and the cricket began.  It was Australia's morning and England were on top in the afternoon.  During the morning session Alfie's brother James and his son Billy joined us having just flown in from Perth.

To be honest, the evening session was quite boring and we were all ready to leave at the close of play.

The ground starting to fill up

The scoreboard showing start of play

Opening batsmen and bowlers in conversation

Anderson with the first delivery of the match

Warner plays one to leg

We walked back to the Grand Hyatt to pick up our luggage before heading out to St Kilda for the evening where five of us had an apartment booked. Richard, as stated previously was staying in the Hyatt and Bill and H were in a Hotels in St Kilda.  At Mike's suggestion, I stayed behind at Richards Hotel to shower as there would have been a queue for the shower at the apartment with five of us staying there. When we were ready we got a taxi to join the others in St Kilda.

We were meeting at Freddie Wimpole's American diner for dinner.  It was a good choice, food was excellent and there was a big selection of beers on tap

Then it was everybody back to their various hotels for the night.  Our apartment was fine for our one nights stay. Perfect location and facilities and amenities were good.