Advertisement
Published: April 28th 2008
Edit Blog Post
The Lagoon
I know you can't see the water but at the end of this very long pool is where the water is. Day 1: Arrive in Cairns
I woke up early and have my lovely last breakfast of Matza fried egg sandwiches. (It’s in the middle of the Jewish festival of Pesach aka Passover and there is nothing leaven in the house, nor is there peanut butter, vegemite :P or any cereal with a decent flavor.) Then I bustled off to take the train to the airport. I arrived there at 8:10 in the morning and it took me a total of 10 minutes to check in and fully go through security. If your eyes are not bulging out of their sockets then you were not listening. It took only TEN MINUTES to check in AND fully go through security.
If I had not said this before security on domestic flights in Australia is a beautiful relief to all my lovely experiences with American domestic security.
Remember those days when you could stay fully clothed before getting on the plane.
*Remember those times when you didn’t have to wait in the longest ques you have ever seen.
*Remember that time when you could bring water, juice, or some other liquid refreshment from home to refresh you on the
Chess
Everyone was hanging out next to the Lagoon and chillin like these cool people playing chess. plane so you didn’t have to enjoy your holiday with only one arm and leg
(if you got that joke then snaps for you).
*Remember that time when you didn’t need a boarding pass to go through security…so you could see loved ones off or pick them up at the gate.
Anyways my point is that all these security measures are not a part of the game here in Australia and I’m loving it.
I met my friend Ramon at the gate (I met him on the outback trip) and we passed the time together before we got on the plane. Qantas is a lovely airline to travel on. We had a lunch and an ice cream bar (a Fudge bar to be exact). We also watched 27 Dresses as the in-flight movie.
(Which is funny because we watched that on the way back from the outback.) When we arrived in Cairns and stepped off the plane it was much warmer and brighter than it had been in Sydney. In Sydney we were escaping two weeks of straight gray skies and rain. In Cairns the sky was blue with only a couple white clouds and I was
Net Tower
It's hard to see in the picture but this looks like ultimate fun. ready to change into shorts and a t-shirt. We took a shuttle to Gilligan’s backpacker’s Hostel and got there just in time to check in at 2pm. We dropped off our stuff and then proceeded to walk around Cairns. We saw a lot of shops and touristy stores. Then we found the waterfront. Cairns CBD doesn’t have a beach because it is all mudflats and we were there at low tide so it didn’t even look appealing. Instead they have The Lagoon which is basically a long pool on the water’s edge that serves as a nice refreshing place to hang out for visitors and tourists alike.
Ramon and I took a walk down the Esplenade (or boardwalk by the beach). They had several nodes along the way that had pictures and information about the history of the Cairns area. At the end of the Esplenade we came across an amazing playground.
Of course I would be one that always finds a playground where ever I am and thinks that it is really cool. But this playground was above the rest. It was called Muddy’s Playground and was a water playground as well as a place
Big Fish
It's like Jonah and the Whale that has some of the coolest elements that I have ever seen. There was a creek that you could change the flow of water by a gate and a wheel with different seized holes in it. There was a huge scheme of ropes and nets that made a tower to climb on. There was a wheel that sat at an angle and rotated kind of like a merry-go-round with no middle. There was also a wheelchair swing, which made me excited too. In another area on a more typical playground structure there was a spider web to climb on. In the little kids playground area there was a giant fish to run through and I sat in it’s mouth. The elements of the playground were very cool but I liked the aesthetics and decorations of the playground as well. There were shadow pictures of active kids (which is something that I have a personal bias for). Overall I give it an A ++!
Then we went back and had a burger for dinner and then came back to the water to walk around the wharf and watch the end of the beautiful sunset colors on the sky. Back at
the hostel I ran into Erica 9the only other person from Sydney Uni) and she kinda latched onto me for the trip, and she turned out to be pretty cool and a lot of fun. I went to bed relatively early to be ready for the big day on the reef the next day.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.059s; Tpl: 0.011s; cc: 12; qc: 24; dbt: 0.0214s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1mb