Impressions of Cairns

We've now been in Cairns for 2 nights and have been very busy. Our hotel is about 2 blocks from the Esplanade along the waterfront. There is no real beach here, but a nice park that runs along the water. All the nice beaches are apparently North of here, where we're headed in a few days. Cairns itself is a funny city. There are so many tourists here that it hardly feels like we're in Australia! The biggest giveaway is the cars on the wrong side of the road and the local accents. We've also been learning the local lingo. You don't "rent" anything here, you "hire" it. So we may hire some bicycles later :-).

The restaurants all have menus in English, French, German, Japanese, Chinese, and Spanish. And that's just a sampling of the languages you hear around town! The food along the main drag seems ridiculously expensive, but we've found some good local restaurants that are more reasonable and have great food. We went to a nice restaurant last night and I had Kangaroo, Crocodile, and Emu meat. Those are definitely a first for me! They were all good, but the Kangaroo was the best of the three. Christina had a platter of seafood ranging from clams to lobster and crab. We've made it a habit to stop by a local sorbet shop and try a different flavor every night. So far we've had PawPaw and Passionfruit.

So far our only sign of jetlag has been a wave of narcalepsy sweeping over us around 8:00 every night. We're trying to work our way up to 10 so we won't fall asleep on some of our evening tours!