Novotel Cairns Oasis

... ears and now understand why babies cry so much on takeoff and landing! Checked into our room at Novotel and then went for a wander around the Cairns foreshore.  It's festival time in Cairns so heaps going on.  Street stalls, music, ...

... 1900 erfüllt hat, das aber diversen Überschwemmungen zum Opfer gefallen ist. Dennoch sehr interessant. Weiter durch Innisfail nach Cairns. Nach kurzer Irrfahrt durch die Stadt haben wir dann schließlich auch das Hotel gefunden. Nach kurzer Ruhepause ...

... since we landed in Australia!  Landed on Sunday morning in Brisbane and had a 5 hour layover before we took off to Cairns (pronounced CANS).    Made the best of the 5 hour layover and had a nice lunch with this couple from Canada. ...

... over the street around 10am to pick up our Avis hire car.  Had a yummy cooked breakfast at a cafe overlooking the Cairns foreshore and then headed south on our day trip to Babinda. Stopped briefly at the Babinda tourist office for some ...

... surprised that there were not huge crowds here.  Thought it may be packed as it's the most hyped and closest island to Cairns, being only a 45min ferry trip away. Went for a walk around the island first.  It's quite tiny - only 1.6km around so ...

... that the line - including 15 tunnels - was hacked out by hand over 100 years ago! Had dinner at a nice Italian restaurant in Cairns then walked around the foreshore some more and took some shots of the Lagoon at Dusk.  Tonight we noticed for the ...

... Eve.  She has been a great host, tour guide, translator, and we now feel like Aussies. Our destination today is Cairns, on the north east coast of Queensland (pronounced more like cans – but I keep saying cains).  The flight takes us ...

Cairns is amazing!  We flew into Cairns early this afternoon to be greeted my small green mountains, beautifully clear waters, and lovely little houses similar to those in the Keys.   The weather is stunning and I don't expect to break a sweat ...

... as we text messaged plans for this evening.  Caroline was invited to hang out with Andy, Richard and me at the Novotel Oasis...a long way from a hostel.    We arrived at this beautiful hotel late in the afternoon.  A drink was ...

Here is the summary of our "magical" tour yesterday. We were greeted by Gus the Magical bus and Cousin Brad at 7:50 yesterday morning.  Cousin Brad, as he referred to himself the whole time, was an overly exuberant Rastafarian-bacpacker-wannabe. ...

Thanks for the tip with the toilet paper, Dad!  You definitely can't flush with your elbow because the two-button flush is sort of split in half and there is no way that your elbow could be accurate enough to flush one or the other.  Mom, I've ...

Toilets.  They are weird here and I am really beginning to strongly dislike them.  The toilets here are the same as the ones the often have in Europe, with the two button flush, which really means that you can never flush them with your foot ...

So I have a gigantic bag (29 kg) that now houses a pile of clean clothes, a pile of dirty clothes, and a pile of kind of dirty clothes.  I am having trouble keeping track of which is which, but am thankful that we will probably be able to wash stuff ...

Waiting for our bus to take us to the Great Barrier Reef, which I will now refer to as the GBR.   Ok, we have made it back safely from the GBR, no sharks whatsoever.  The day began with a drive of about an hour or so up the coast to Port ...