Right. On to...
Day 7:
On the morning of Day 7, we did a sightseeing flight over Uluru and Kata Tjuta in a small plane. Kata Tjuta, in particular, is extremely impressive from the air, but even just getting to see the bushland spread out below us from altitude was cool. (Less cool was what the flight did to my stomach, but at least none of us lost our breakfast. Which is more than could be said for the person who went up before us. Oops.)
After that, we had a little while to spend kicking back by the pool before our flight to Cairns on a significantly larger and less nausea-inducing plane. Lying on a deck chair in the shade reading Darwin was decidedly pleasant after the previous day's fast-paced desert trek, but no matter how often I expressed a desire for one, no cabana boys came by to serve me fruity drinks with umbrellas in them. Ah, well. I suppose even on vacation one can't have everything.
The hotel in Cairns may not have had any cabana boys, either, but it was impressive nonetheless. Hell, it's probably the poshest hotel I've ever set foot in, let alone stayed at. For those who may have missed the first of these travelogue posts, wherein I talked about hotels, here's the picture of our room in Cairns again. The shots I took of the lobby didn't really come out that well, so I won't post them here, but you can see a bit of it on the hotel's website.
We had the evening free in Cairns, which I spent happily exploring the immediate area, especially the night markets, a late-opening shopping area featuring lots of crowded, just-on-the-right-side-of-seedy shops selling all kinds of cheap goods and services. It was a lot of fun to wander around while eating ice cream.
(By the way, Australia is a great place for ice cream. Everywhere we went, there were little places serving delicious oddball flavors, some of them featuring tropical fruits I'd barely even heard of. I'm not saying that this in itself justifies the airfare, but it definitely helps make the trip feel entirely worth it once you're there.)
Congratulations on finding a store open after 5 p.m That's a change since I went to Cairns.
ReplyDeleteWhat I liked particularly was the Number One Burger I had someplace. It had nearly everything you could think of on it: lettuce, tomato, ketchup, mustard, ham, onion, cheese -- even a fried egg. (Yeah, I flew all the way from the U.S. and ordered a hamburger.)
Most of the stores close early, but this place was open until, I think, 11:00. Not sure if it would have been there when you went or not; I got the impression it had existed for a while, but then it's been a long time since your trip, huh?
ReplyDeleteI saw a lot of menus offering burgers with fried eggs. And beets. I passed. :)