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.
