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Old 11 Aug 22, 10:02 PM  
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AzureSky
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My wee simple Melbourne trip report

Never done a trip report before but thought it might be useful to do one this time given TUI are now flying to Melbourne Orlando airport. We are a very boring family on holiday so this won’t be a day by day account and I rarely take photos so just words I am afraid.

Background
We are a Scottish family of four and until covid hit we owned a villa near Champions Gate for 7 years. Prior to lockdown we had been thinking about selling up as owning and running a villa is quite a commitment in time and money but we couldn’t bring ourselves to do it. (I am going to side track here but honestly owing a villa and managing its bookings and guests is mentally exhausting. There is always something to do and visits to the villa always results in some sort of DIY, trips to Home Depot, deep cleaning, jet washing the drive and catching up with the property manager who inevitability hadn’t done something you asked them to do or have missed a very obvious issue. I honestly think my kids spent more time in Lowes/Home Depot/Bed Bath and Beyond/Ikea than the theme parks ! Do we regret owning a villa – not in the slightest. It was a great experience and the feeling you get when a guest gives you positive feedback is amazing! So don't let me put you off owning - just go into with your eyes open - its hard work). So as we know lockdown happened and we had an empty calendar so no guests to have to disappoint if we sold so we decided to put it on the market to see what happened. It then sold very quickly! We had an owners closet full of stuff which our realtor kindly took to a storage unit for us as quotes for shipping it home were really expensive. This was September 2020 and the stuff has been sitting in that locker until now (July 2022). So this trip is to see what is actually in the locker and have a last trip to Florida for the time being.

Plans
Flight only with TUI. One week in a house at the beach in Indialantic and one week at a house on the Indian river in Melbourne. Collect our stuff from the storage locker in Davenport and generally just chill out, eat good food and enjoy the sun and the break from work for two weeks.

Flight
• We flew direct from Glasgow with Tui in premium to Melbourne. Flight was on time and really good. Cabin crew all very helpful and seemed to enjoy their jobs ! My only negative would be the cabin crew turning off the lights and dimming the cabin on the way to Melbourne – why do they do this? It makes it feel like a night flight and really messes up my body clock and mind sitting in the dark! They did this after they served the food for about 3 to 4 hours and they were the longest hours of the flight for me! This affect anyone else? Leg room in Premium was really good. Films were old and I rewatched A Star is Born for the hundredth time – love that film ! Flight back departed a little early and again was very good. However there were no blankets or pillows provided and they had run out of some types of drinks – not sure why?
• Premium in my opinion was worth every penny. Small cabin, food was actually edible (the cheesecake on the return flight is a worth a mention as it was delicious!). Having a dedicated check in desk meant we could skip the long economy check in queue. Bags were first off the plane in both Melbourne and Glasgow. Free lounge access in Glasgow and Melbourne was also a bonus. In Melbourne the lounge is before security but a TUI rep walks around and tells you when it’s time to go through security ready to board the plane.

Car hire
• Car hire was really expensive for a two week hire from the airport but reasonable if we collected from a local Hertz office instead. However the local office closed at 5pm so we decided to start the rental the next day and take a taxi or uber to our accommodation. This was just in case there were any delays to our flight arriving
• A couple of days before travelling we noticed it was an okay price to do a one day car hire to collect at the airport on arrival so did this instead of a taxi and then swapped the cars the next day. The lady at the local Hertz office said that she has seen loads of TUI customers stay in Melbourne a couple of days at the beach then pick up a car and drive to Orlando.
• Uber works well in Melbourne and they sit in the cell phone parking lot at the airport waiting for customers so you shouldn’t have to wait too long for a car.


Melbourne Airport
We were one of the first off the plane as we were in premium and then our bags were off really quick which meant we were first through immigration and first to car rental. All very easy and probably in the car within 30 minutes.

Accommodation
First week was a house on the beach at Indialantic. It was stunning and great to just walk out the back gate directly onto the sand. It also had a swing seat in the back garden where I spent a lot of hours just watching the sea and the occasional dolphin.
Second week we moved to a house on the mainland but directly backing onto the Indian river. It had a 300 ft private dock and every day dolphins would come swimming past. Very relaxing.


Food
Some places we ate were:
• Smokey Bones BBQ - for our meal on the first night we just wanted something quick and easy so drove along 192 and found this restaurant. Not great – food took ages to arrive and then wasn’t that good. My DH’s ribs weren’t edible at all and part of my order was wrong. We spoke with the manager and got money taken off the bill. Not a great start to our holiday food !
• Seafood station – not much to look at but it was lovely. You basically build a seafood basket of food or choice one they have on their menu. My tip would be to ask for the seasoning and garlic butter on the side. This is an option on the menu and think my meal would have been overpowered by both if they had been added to the food.
• Squid Lips – excellent serve and food. We ate there a couple of times
• Longdoggers – great food and I had my favourite mahi tacos. We ate at both Melbourne locations. Seemed to be a lot of locals eating here which I always take as being a good sign!
• Oceanside pizza – we got take out pizza for tea one night to eat outside at the pool. It was really good but massive! Plenty left over for lunch the next day.
• Goombay’s – again not much to look at from the outside but great hospitality and food. Again a lot of locals dining and drinking here which gave it a homely feel
• Grills Seafood – again lovely fresh seafood options and good service
• Longhorns and Outback – obviously there are lots of these in Orlando but the ones we visited in Melbourne just felt cleaner and had better service.
• Joan’s Perfect Pie – we went there for ice cream and the key lime pie ice cream was amazing. They stocked amazing looking pies which we planned to go back and try but never got round to it
• Bonefish Willys – kids thought this was a hilarious name for a restaurant – no idea why?!


Overall this was probably the best we have ever eaten in Florida. I think I only had fries once as there was always veg available as a side or salad or baked potatoes. I’ve seen a few folk mention low carb diets and I think it would be very easy to accommodate this in the restaurants here.

Weather
• Excellent and probably around 30 degrees plus everyday. The downside of this was that it was too hot to do much during the day.

Shopping
• Vero Beach outlets – this was a let down. There are lots of empty shops and it closed at 7pm! So we didn’t even manage to get to visit the stores we did want to go to as we arrived at 6pm!
• Tanger outlets, Daytona beach– lovely outside mall with a good selection of shops. It is also surrounded by bigger stores across the road and some restaurants. Stores like TJ Maxx and Ross Dress for Less
• Food shopping – WOW – it was much more expensive than our last visits. Publix has always been expensive but it just felt ridiculous this time so we shopped in Aldi instead. Aldi prices were cheaper but not as cheap as Aldi in the UK.

Overall impression of Melbourne
• I would definitely return
• The beach and sand aren’t as nice as the gulf coast but there was something more genuine about Melbourne than the likes of Anna Maria or Naples. It felt that people actually lived and worked in Melbourne/Melbourne beach and that it wasn’t 100% tourist ville and I like that.
• The direct flight from Glasgow meant travel day was a breeze and we didn’t even feel tired when we arrived. Fingers crossed this route remains on TUIs plans
• Food was the best I have ever eaten on holiday in Florida. We have travelled to quite a few different place in Florida and never eaten this well.
• Traffic – this was a big one for me. Not once did we ever get stuck in traffic. I have lost hours of my life stuck on I4 and it got the point we were put off going anywhere far from our villa because of traffic. It was so nice to have the freedom to go anywhere and know that traffic wouldn’t be an issue. I also think driving standards were much higher.

If you've made it to this point thank you for reading - I hope this is of some use to my fellow dibbers!
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