Wednesday 3rd July
The first two days of this AFL weekend away were spent at the Novotel, Geelong. Our flight was a bit delayed out of Sydney and we didn’t get into Melbourne until about 12:30 and, by the time we got our car navigation system worked out, it was almost 3:30 before we arrived in Geelong.
Our hotel was right across from the waterfront and our room had spectacular views out over the harbour. We’d been sitting for much of the day so we simply dropped our bags and went for a walk and were greatly impressed to find a beautiful and wide promenade path that weaved along the waterfront. Our first impressions of Geelong were very favourable. I do love a harbourfront promenade for my morning walks.
Our day had started rather early and so we decided to dine in the Hotel restaurant, Tempo Kitchen & Bar, where we were advised to book as, when we registered our interest on check in, we found it was almost full for the dinner session. This proved to be a rather poor choice though as both meals were terrible, bringing the 4.4 Google rating into some question! We will be looking for somewhere else to dine tomorrow night.
Thursday 4th July
It was a glorious morning and clear sky that greeted us on waking and we were lucky that our hotel room faced towards the east as we enjoyed the most beautiful sunrise over the water. Perfect conditions for Mark to go on his bike ride and for me to do yoga and have a walk.
The clouds rolled in whilst we were having breakfast though and rendered the sky to the more usual grey colour that we are used to with our trips to Melbourne. Thankfully, breakfast at the hotel was much better than dinner the night before.
Our plan for the day was to go for a drive to explore the nearby areas of Barwon Heads, Torquay and Anglesey. Barwon Heads was one of the filming sites for the TV show SeaChange and so it was quite interesting to see the place where Diver Dan had supposedly lived: fast forward to today and the building is now a restaurant.
There is a lovely promenade walk from Diver Dan’s which we explored and it was a very pleasant way to spend about an hour exploring the waterfront and headland area. We also went and did a loop up and down the main street. The shops, cafes and restaurants were quite interesting and suggested to me that area is a fairly prosperous one. We went on to drive down to Torquay but we had been there a couple of years ago so we didn’t bother stopping and then went on to Anglesey but we didn’t end up stopping there either. So, it was back to the hotel for Mark to try and charge up the car and to have a bit of a rest before dinner. The car charging proved to be a more difficult exercise than planned as we were given the wrong cords, yet again, so instead of being able to charge the car across the road Mark had to drive 9 km to a designated charging station. Note to self: whenever you hire an electric car check the kind of cords you are given. However, once he arrived at the charging station Mark discovered the charging port was jammed and unable to open so, after a phone call to the rental company, he made his way back to their premises in Geelong where they sorted out the issue but this meant swapping the car; we now have a conventional petrol car. It was just very lucky for us that we had headed back from our outing with enough time to sort this car charging saga.
My afternoon was less eventful other than returning to our room to find it hadn’t been serviced. I was later to discover that that is standard practice here and that you have to request a room service if you want one. It didn’t really bother me at all, but it just seems that this place falls quite a bit short of the 4* star standard that the Accor chain offers in other parts of the world. Our room was large and comfortable though and the view was great so I still think the hotel is worth considering for a Geelong stay; just don’t eat dinner at the hotel and make sure you ask for a room service if you wish for one.
It was almost 4 pm before Mark got home with the updated car and so we hung out in the room for a bit before heading downstairs to the Happy Hour and then on to Sailors’ Rest for dinner. This was a much better meal than the night before. We’d enjoyed our short visit to Geelong and would recommend the area for a visit. Tomorrow we head to Melbourne for a three night stay and to catch up on some AFL.
