We woke up, and then went for a short stroll to find somewhere for breakfast. Over $80 for the two of us! It’s certainly not a cheap town.

After breakfast we went for a stroll around a different area, and found some banana trees:

We then walked around the pier and Hemingway brewery, looking at all the boats, before returning to our room to do our teeth. We put on proper walking shoes and prepared ourselves for a real walk. We went up the hill, to one of the lookouts, and then strolled along the northern point of the Port Douglas, eventually finishing at the park. We had some fantastic views of the ocean, and luckily there was even a water fountain halfway, since I hadn’t brought any water with me!

We were pretty tired afterwards, and decided to get some lunch. We went to one of the restaurants we had checked out for dinner, and was maybe 20% full. We asked if we could get a table for lunch, and they said we have one at 1.30!!!! We weren’t waiting 90 minutes when they were so empty right now. So we ended up at a small cafe, where I had a ham, cheese, tomato and onion toastie and Kaoru had a caeser salad, which I helped her with. The water we drank was well needed, and we probably had too much, too quickly, so struggled to eat all the food.

We returned to our hotel and had a siesta for a while. We made it back to the wharf around 4.00 and booked on a 4.30 sunset river crocodile cruise.

No crocodiles. No sunset as it was too cloudy. Just a python. Oh, and it included a complimentary drink on arrival, and a snack. Well, it was a nice ride on a paddle steamer anyway.

We walked up to the yacht club for dinner tonight, for another simple meal. I had fish and chips, and Kaoru had a barra burger. The yacht club was completely open – no “room” per se. We saw a couple of mice outside on the floor, and there was a chip on the floor near us, which they wanted to come and take, but I kept moving my feet and they changed their mind pretty quickly.

We walked back to the hotel, had a bath, and an early night.

5.00 alarm!!! The things we do for a holiday. I had a usual morning – shower, breakfast, check email. And we left for Melbourne airport about 6.10. Everything was smooth and we were sitting down looking at the planes from around 7.15, with 45 minutes to spare before boarding.

Unfortunately in amongst my emails, I found there was malware on the new Inflatable World website. Having just spoken to Mof and gotten him on board as Inflatable World’s new Word Press guru (of which he’s barely touched), I spent pre-flight, and the majority of the flight (until the laptop battery went dead) messaging him, and trying to work out how to fix things.

We landed in Cairns a little early – just after 11. The flight was so quick as I was so focused on work the whole way. There was a hold up at the gate though, and we spent about 15 minutes sitting on the end of the runway waiting for another plane to leave before we could go to the gate and get off. We collected our bag and waited for our transfer to Port Douglas.

I spent most of the drive trying to work from my phone. I can’t believe people use phones for so much. It took me so much longer to do everything, but my laptop was flat so that was my only option. I pointed out Ellis Beach to Kaoru (where I stayed about a year ago with Nick and Pete), and lost connection several times along the way, but we arrived at the Regal in Port Douglas around 2.15. Checkin opened at 2.00, so perfect!

We went to our room – it was modest, but had a beautiful bathroom with hot tub! And was right in town – not like a lot of the resorts further out which would need a car to go anywhere. I fired up the laptop and kept working on these problems, until about 3.30 when we went to get a bit of food. Unfortunately there wasn’t really anywhere open – we did see a few places (pubs) which had food listed, but they don’t start until 5. We ended up at Coles and got a pizza roll to keep us going, and then wandered around for a while.

A bit more walking around, and we found 4 mile beach.

We returned to our hotel for a while to work some more, and then went out for dinner. Late lunches were hard to find somewhere…dinner was impossible! All the places that looked nice, even though they had seats available, said they’re booked out! So, mental note for Port Douglas – if you want to eat somewhere, you best decide where and when a day before hand. One place said they’re even booked out for tomorrow, and nearly fully booked for Sunday already!

Eventually we found the Tin Shed, which was basically an RSL-y type place. We didn’t have to sign in for just eating. We had a basic pub meal, and I finished it off with a coral bay iced tea – their take on a long island iced tea, but blue.

After a relaxing meal, we walked back through town and admired the street lit up, before returning to our room for the night.