Australia Opens its arms to us

We both had an early start to our day, but I guess that's to be expected with the whole jet-lag thing... Up and refreshed and ready to greet the day with much anticipation, only to step outside to find that it was totally cloudy and rather chilly. Bummer. Looked like our plans of going to the beach would have to be postponed.  Instead we enjoyed a nice breakfast followed by dessert! We took a couple attempts at the Tim Tam Slam (more on this to come)!

Newport train station

We were content and generally relaxed aside from a slight sugar rush from the Tim Tams when we decided we would head into town to the Australian Open to try to spread our Canadian cheer to Milos Raonic.

We left the house at noon to begin our first excursion with a walk to the Newport train station. We paid $3.50 for a day pass on the train, what a bargain we thought that was!

Steph on the Tram (streetcar)

We arrived at Flinders Street train station where the sun was shining beautifully! We hopped on a free shuttle tram (Melbourne's equivalent to a streetacar) to the gates of the Aussie Open.  We stepped inside the gates and we were immediately excited to find out that it was only $35 to buy a Grounds Pass for the day! ...excitement, excitement, excitement... "sorry we're all sold out for today"... darn.

Temporarily closed out of the Open

Our spirits may have been a little shaken but do you think that stopped us? Nope. We desperately hung around the gates long enough to realize that if we found people who were leaving we'd be able to buy their Grounds Pass off of them. So we loitered around, asking people who were heading away from the gates until... success! A couple of aussie boys passed their passes off to us for free. We were in. Awesome.

So we started wandering the grounds and stumbled upon the merchandise tent thinking we'd take a look at what souvenirs we might be able to pick up since we didn't have to spend any money on admission. We started considering the splurge on overpriced cotton t-shirts when a young man who was representing ANZ (some bank company) told us he wanted to buy our merchandise for us in order to promote some offer or something... what was the catch? Well we each walked away with a free over priced t-shirt and hat! All because we agreed to enter a contest online for a chance to win a cell phone from his company... works for me.

Things were good. Until we stumbled across the court where Daniel Nestor was just breifly preoccupied with winning his doubles match in a tie breaker when really he was just waiting for us to show up so he could MEET US! Things were great. We exchanged a few words on our commonalities of living in Toronto and knowing Mike Richards (our kin tennis class teacher/UWO tennis team coach) before he begged us to get a picture with him.

Oh heyyy Daniel!

After that we made our way over to the court where Milos' game was set to take place. We watched a brutally long women's doubles game while waiting for our Canadian champ to hit the court. Definitely worth the wait! As soon as Milos walked onto the court we got a nice taste of home as Canada flags began popping up all around the stands while probably every Canadian who was in Melbourne cheered as if we were in a hockey arena. We cheered him to a strong victory! He was actually so appreciative of our cheering that he begged to autograph Steph's flag.

dork (haha)

A taste of maple

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Spot the Canadians!

About 9 hours and $3.50 later we were finally headed home. What a day!

Hope your day was as eventful and as cheap as ours was!

Sincerely,
AUS