Novotel Oasis

After a fun and full week in Victoria, we are moving on. Shelley dropped us at the airport at 6:00am and was off to Murrabit for Christmas Eve.  She has been a great host, tour guide, translator, and we now feel like Aussies. Our destination today ...

... 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 ...

... joy of flying with blocked 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 ...

... was hectic with people checking out - so we waited for our room with a cool drink and some lunch. The Novotel Bogor is set on beautiful grounds and is an oasis. We settled in and enjoyed the evening with a light meal and a cocktail at the bar. We ...

... without her.   The Chinese Gardens were beautiful, a gift to Australia on her Bicentenary from China.  It was like a small oasis of calm in amongst the busy city - pagodas, streams, flowers and trees.  You would hardly realise you were in ...

... de calles estrechas con casas antiguas, algunas reformadas con mucho encanto, con pequeñas plazas donde los hombres juegan a las cartas, son oasis dentro de una gran ciudad que están en vías de extinción, prefieren grandes edificios de hormigón en su ...

... up some Dunkin' Donuts and went to Lumphini Park, in the middle of Bangkok's new town to eat them. This park is an oasis in the madness that is Bangkok, it was so peaceful and tranquil. Lots of Bangkok people use it for their exercise area as there ...

... convents but they have all been nice, clean and spacious. The most crowded quarters we experienced were in the hotel chain Novotel. But, though their locations weren’t always the greatest, these hotels are also very clean and well kept. In Morocco ...

... the flights. Virgin Atlantic.They're even flying home premium economy! Their hotel in Hong Kong has now been confirmed as the Novotel something, something...the one by the airport, so I'm told!! This is on Lantau Island and is handy for the Big Buddha ...

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 ...

Whew...it has been a whirlwind 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 ...

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 ...

Auf dem Weg nach Cairns mal wieder Regen. Auf Empfehlung haben wir dennoch Halt in Mesa Creek gemacht, um den Paronella Park zu besuchen. Ein Paradies im Regenwald, das sich ein Spanier 1900 erfüllt hat, das aber diversen Überschwemmungen zum Opfer ...

Finally a sleep in! Had a later start today then ambled 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 ...