02-18-2020: Reunion of Childhood Friends

Today we had a special day, but I’ll get to that. We checked out of our hotel and Lou and I went off to retrieve the car from the car park. That was an adventure in and of itself. We managed to find the car and then navigate the pay machine without too much difficulty, although the machine didn’t like my credit card so Lou had to use his. But then we had to figure out how to exit the parking ramp. There wasn’t one exit sign to be seen. We drove up this row and down that row and eventually found the exit. Then the next issue was navigating to the hotel, which was really only a block and a half away, but we had to make a very large circuit around several blocks in order to get positioned to head down our one way street. It took a while and poor Christine, who was waiting at the hotel with our luggage, called me to see if we were okay because it seemed to her we were gone a long time. We finally arrived, loaded up, and then faced our next challenge – driving to the Langham Hotel.

Lou had his TomTom programed and I had Google Maps on my phone. If we had followed the TomTom, we would have gone through several turns through the CBD. Google Maps showed a more direct route with just 3 turns, all to the left (a good thing in Australia), and so we managed to stay relatively calm and got to the hotel in good order. Then Lou handed the keys to the valet parking guy and in to the hotel we went. And what a hotel it is. The Langham Hotel is a luxury hotel for sure. We gawked upon entering. We had arrived more than an hour early for our date, just in case something happened on the way, so we had time to walk around and take in our surroundings. We then landed in the bar/lounge just outside the Melba Restaurant and had a cappuccino and people watched.

We were waiting for the arrival of Martin and Sandi Bonavita whom we were meeting for lunch at Melba’s Restaurant. Martin was a childhood friend of Christine’s in Malta. She got reconnected with him via Facebook. Somehow, Christine became FB friends with Martin’s older brother Roger. On Roger’s birthday, Christine noticed that someone named Martin had wished Roger a happy birthday. She wondered if Martin was the boy she had played Monopoly with and watched Rin-Tin-Tin in Italian on TV in Malta and so she contacted him via Messenger. Sure enough, it was her Martin. They chatted for hours on Messenger and Christine learned that Martin lived in Melbourne. When she told him we were coming to Australia Martin invited us to visit him in Melbourne. Another fantastic coincidence when Christine chatted with Martin was learning that Martin and Lou are cousins. Martin’s mother and Louis’s mother were sisters. Learning this, it made so much more sense how Christine and Martin were together as playmates; the Bonavitas and the Caruanas probably spent time together. Christine’s mother and Louis’s father were sister and brother so there was another connection. They all were related so they likely were together a lot, and Martin lived nearby to Christine in Malta. So another reason for us to be in Melbourne was to meet up with Martin and his wife Sandi.

Martin and Christine

The lunch buffet at Melba’s was world class, an unbelievable array of food, including a seafood bar with everything from the sea you could imagine. Just that alone would have been all anyone could have wanted. But no, there was an antipasto table, a cheese and nuts table, a salad bar, and Indian, Asian and roasted meat tables. We all went back many times to sample all the fantastic food. And did I mention the desserts? Oh my goodness! Actually, what I liked about the dessert display is that each selection was just a small bite so that you could sample several without feeling guilty for taking too much. My favorite was a little mini fruit tart. At any rate, Martin treated us all to this wonderful buffet lunch at Melba’s which was so kind of him to do.

Everyone enjoyed catching up with one another. Sandi has been recovering from a very long hospitalization but seems to be doing fairly well. She has the very rare Li-Fraumeni syndrome, which is a a TP-53 gene mutation that that makes it difficult for her system to suppress the growth of cancer cells. She has been struggling with this syndrome and several bouts of cancer for 20 years. We all pray that her recovery will continue. Martin owns a very large high tech laser metal cutting and folding business. He’s still working but is beginning to slow down. He and Sandi love to travel and he hopes that Sandi will be able to do more traveling soon. They are a nice couple and seem fun-loving and compatible. What a nice reunion for Christine and for Lou who hasn’t seen his cousin in a long time.

All of us at the Langham Hotel outside of Melba’s Restaurant

After lunch, we followed Martin and Sandi to get on the highway. Lou was really happy to have an escort. We were off to a place called Lakes Entrance about 4 hours away on the coast. Lou wanted to take us up the Princes Highway along the coast on our return to Bensville. We had a very challenging drive as it was pouring rain and the traffic out of Melbourne was very heavy. We eventually got to clearer roads, but the weather was awful, very heavy rain most of the way. At one point the lightening was tremendous and I kept jumping every time I saw a lightening bolt. Lou did yeoman’s work getting us safely to Lakes Entrance.

Lakes Entrance is a holiday destination in the state of Victoria and it boasts Australia’s largest network of inland waterways.

Lou thought that there would be lots of available accommodations because the summer holidays were over. Christine had identified a couple of possible places before hand, but when we drove by them, both were closed for the season. We drove around for a while, saw several No Vacancy signs, but then saw a Comfort Inn and stopped in. They had a 2-bedroom suit available, which we happily took. We were all tired and ready to be off the road. Just as we were getting into our rooms, a nice rainbow appeared which we took as a good omen.

Ominous sky, but a rainbow appeared

We weren’t too interested in shopping around for a place to eat, so we stopped in at a KFC and had a light dinner sitting out on the shop’s veranda and enjoyed the evening close to the water. It was nice to be out of the car and in the sea air. After dinner Christine and I walked back to the motel while Lou drove back. We were glad for the opportunity to stretch our legs.

Today was a really interesting day with lots of happenings. We enjoyed tremendously our time in Melbourne and made good memories with Robert and Ed and then Martin and Sandi. Tomorrow it’s on to Batemans Bay, another holiday destination.

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