A couple of days in Cairns

Monday 2nd April 2018

Mark and I needed to visit Cairns and so we dragged Tom along with us for a few days.

Our flight left Sydney at 9.45 am and Matt very kindly drove us out to the airport. The Rugby 7s female team and their coaches were in the Longe whilst we were there and it made for a rather festive wait for our flight.

We opted for an AirBnB for our two destinations and the Cairns choice was a great one! (Reference: www.airbnb.com.au/rooms/20786332?) The two bed apartment overlooked the Marina and was well located being right on the coastal board walk and an easy walk in to the city. There were numerous restaurants and bars under the apartment complex and along the board walk so this is the area I would suggest folk stay if ever visiting Cairns.

We dropped our bags after checking in near 2pm and headed straight out to explore the area and take a light but late lunch. The Boatshed is located along the Boardwalk and offered a Happy Hour and had some great live entertainment so we opted for this venue. We then headed back to the apartment for a rest before heading out to dinner and opted for the Waterbar & Grill as it had the most people but wasn’t over-booked. The food was ok but the maître d’ helped us to select a nice red wine. The restaurant boasts the best steaks in the world but it was not quite as good as the ones we get at Bondi Junction and BBQ for ourselves. We’d had a big day so headed home after dinner and turned in by about 9.30 pm.

Room enough for a lounge and dining table under the covered part of balcony.

Plus another bar table setting to capture the view.

Waiting for a Table for a late lunch at ‘The Boatshed’; just downstairs from our apartment.

Oysters and Prosecco for lunch at the ‘Boatshed’.

The evening view from our deck - balcony. — The evening view from our deck – balcony.

Tuesday 3rd April

Mark and I rose for our usual morning walk and took the Boardwalk route north for about 2 kms before heading home with a coffee stop. Mark and I had some business to attend to so we set off for that at 10.30 am and arrived home near midday to see that Tom had only jut risen!

We left Tom to have some brekky and do some study whilst Mark and I went for a walk through Cairns town. It is a very pretty and, as you could well imagine, lush tropical city bustling with tourists from all demographics and with lots of property development in progress. Mark heard that a very wealthy Syrian is building hotels all through the city so this might help underpin the struggling residential property market.

Mark and I visited the Cairns Art Gallery which was only small but was hosting an impressive exhibition of the art of Del Kathryn Barton . We then sourced out some Sushi for lunch before heading home to escape the heat. I don’t think Cairns will ever be a great location for the Retiree segment of the market. It’s just too darned hot!

Once back at the apartment I spent some time doing this blog whist Mark caught up on some reading. I must shout out another ‘Thank you’ to Matt here for his help in getting my iPhone photos uploaded to the Cloud. This has made it SO much easier to load photos into blog posts!

The three of us headed out about 4.30 pm and our first visit was to the Night Markets. The markets run 365 days a year from 4 -11 pm and host food, services and assorted local produce items and goods. This is where you come to if you want crocodile shaped soap, crocodile teeth and assorted crocodile garments, bags and leather goods. It was definitely worth the visit and filled in 30 minutes or so. We wandered up the Esplanade in search of the place where we had bought chocolate croissants earlier in the day. This was a Pizza venue and so we thought we’d give them a go for dinner. More fool we though 🙁 La Pizza served up the worst pizzas we’d ever had so we would stick to the Boardwalk in future for dinner venues!

Our path home was very pretty though with the trees illuminated in an array of different colours and this made the walk home more interesting. It was another early night home though but this was ok as we were able to enjoy our balcony view over a glass of wine before heading off to bed.

There is a huge free Lagoon Pool right on the board walk at the waters edge of Trinity Inlet.

Walking along Trinity Inlet for our morning walk.

Some others dudes sleeping in…. like Tom!

Some Mangroves trying to make a come-back!

A great idea! Dog bowl attached to bubbler!

Promenade closed off for the Commonwealth Games.

Crocodile soap…only at the Night Markets!

Wednesday 4th April:

It was a cooler morning to start our last day, just 21 degrees, but this was greatly appreciated. Mark and I headed out for a final walk and noted many others out enjoying the reprieve with the weather. We have been rather lucky though as the weather forecast had been for rain, and cyclonic rain at that, but we’ve had clear days with a bit of cloud for sun protection. When the sun comes out though it’s very hot which is probably why the age skew here is to the low side. We’ve been surprised by how many American accents seem to populate the obvious backpacker- type younger crowd and Mark wondered if they might rather be Canadians though and attached to the Games.

We’ve enjoyed our short stay in Cairns and complement the local Government / Council for maintaining the gardens and public areas to such a clean and high standard. Cairns seems to be on the edge of a prosperity boom and we just hope the domestic real estate markets catches a bid here too.