Vacation from a vacation- Geelong

Our new apartment isn't ready for us to move into until Monday the 25th, so we had to figure out some interim accommodations. The Westin we were staying at is currently $1500 a night, so that wasn't really an option. We traded in one nights worth of points at the Westin for three nights at the Sheraton in a nearby town, Geelong. When we arrived in Melbourne it really felt like we were on vacation, but then we started to "normal" things: opening a bank account, going to the grocery store, getting health insurance. Then we left Melbourne and now we really feel like we're on vacation, since we are far enough from our new home city that we can't do any more normal stuff.

Geelong is a town about an hour train ride from Melbourne and is right on the water as well. Our hotel is across the street from the beach, we don't have a car, so we've pretty much been at the beach every day. It's been nice and really relaxing, but I'm ready to be back in Melbourne and get settled into a place with a refrigerator and stove and bedrooms.

The kids have loved playing in the sand for hours on end- they never seem to get bored of building castles and digging holes.

This weekend is Victoria week, basically a long weekend in preparation for Australia Day on Tuesday. There is a big sailing regatta going on, beach volleyball tournaments, lots of vendors and street performers; basically, a really good weekend to be here!

This town has an amazing swim/play area. You can see in the pictures there is a beach that has a swim area that is fenced off (so a big...who knows what...doesn't get you) and also has diving boards, floating platforms and some other fun stuff.

There's also and salt water pool (minus the seaweed and sand from the beach) and a fun playground- I guess that's why taxes here are so ridiculous, they build cool stuff like this!

Obviously, the kids loved the beach! Sand angels and all!

We saw a sign advertising camel rides on the and could not pass up the opportunity!

Did you know that there are nearly 1/2 million camels in australia since the first ones were brought over from India in 1840? Most of them were set free and now they roam the desert, crazy.

Not only did we get to ride the camels, but we also got to get up close and personal with them as we fed them! It was so fun!

They had set up a beach volleyball space for some big matches that were happening Tuesday, so all weekend there were exhibition matches going on. There were also a few courts set up around for people to play on, so Chris joined in on the fun. Nice shot, huh?

The town has these "people" all over the place, swimmers on the beach, sailing teams at the marina, "footy" players at the park; so funny!

Boats at sunset on our last night in Geelong. Tomorrow, back to Melbourne.