March 3
We woke
up in the Coconut Grove Resort this morning.
Our cabin has two small rooms.
All three kids are sleeping in one room (Sam on a mattress on the
floor), and Sharon and I are in the other room which is hardly large enough to
fit our bed. It’s getting too tight in
here…. time to check out. We pack up the
car and head out, first to a place north of the city called Palm Cove
Beach. When we get there, we discover
that it’s not possible to swim in the ocean, except in some small enclosed
areas, because of the stingers (jellyfish) and the crocodiles. My personal impression of the town was that
of a sort of elitist place (I can only speak for myself) built up all at once
as opposed to having evolved naturally, but in any event we returned to Cairns,
where we’d discovered a really nice city center, complete with a mall, bohemian
shops, backpacker hotels markets that contain food vendors who sell wonderful
Asian food. So after a wonderful lunch
prepared by a Japanese couple we go in search of the local lagoon. This is a wonderful public pool and great
alternative to the ocean, which can be quite dangerous…
On our
way there we stop in a tourist information office where we are able to not only
find new accommodations for our last two nights in Australia, but also are able
to book a boat trip to the Great Barrier Reef.
The lagoon was very refreshing after being in the city, after all, we’re
in the tropics…. and we enjoyed a swim in the water. Later, we checked into the Cairns
Queenslander, our new place. It’s large,
comfortable, and on the upper limit of affordable. Sharon goes out later with Annie and Sam to
do some shopping for dinner and brings back supper.
After
dinner, we (Sharon and I) go off in search of an internet connection in order
to book a hotel in Singapore. We will be
arriving there late (9:20 pm) on the 5th, and don’t want to have to
search for hotels at that hour. We find
a connection in the restaurant connected to the hotel we’re staying. We sit out on the patio, I order a glass of
wine for Sharon, and we go about searching for accommodations in
Singapore. When we ask what we owe for
the wine we were told we owed nothing, and were even given the rest of a bottle
of wine. Sadly, we learned that there
had been a dispute between the people running the restaurant and the landlord,
and that they were shutting down.
This
occurrence made me think of how lucky we are to be travelling, while others are
having a hard time.
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