Cairns to Melbourne

Today is our last day of heat until we get to Fiji in a months time! Hopefully this rest will allow Carly's skin time to recover. After falling asleep early last night I was up early so decided to start planning Melbourne! Carly's not fussed and I'm super excited for this part of the trip so we'll see how it pans out!

As luck would have it the afl semis have fallen with a game this Friday at the Mcg! I've always wanted to go to the stadium and have managed to get tickets to the game, very excited! I'll see if we have time to do the stadium tour aswell on one of our days! Its the Lords of Australian cricket with their own Mcc members.

After an early hostel check out we headed into town to see if we could improve upon our early impressions. I'm afraid to report that we really couldn't! After our short time in Cairns we're eternally grateful for everyone we've met who told us to stay in Port Douglas!

The city survives on the great barrier reef and some stunning surrounding scenery but the city itself feels very tired. Cheap backpackers, dodgy Irish pubs etc... We paid for 3 hours parking but could only survive for 90 minutes. In that time we took in the marina, a few shops and a very good breakfast. Despite Cairns tired feel we found a gem of a brunch spot thanks to trip advisor. Perfectly poached eggs with my Eggs Benedict.

We finished our excursion with a wander round the modern art gallery. Sadly the main two galleries were shut so that didn't take too long either! Done with Cairns we decided to drive out of town to the highly rated botanical gardens. With no advance warning the turning to the gardens was closed for roadworks! Giving up on Cairns we decided to head North to Palm Cove and see what it had to offer!

The joy of hiring a car! Palm Cove is everything a small seaside town should be. A treelined walkway running alongside golden sands and boutique hotels with a few interesting shops and galleries. I'm sure you could spent a very relaxing week here enjoying the weather and multitude of cafes and restaurants. We enjoyed a stroll around and stopped for a few drinks with beautiful views along the Cove. I'm not sure why anyone would stay in Cairns over Port Douglas or Palm Cove...

We headed back to the airport early afternoon to drop back the car hire and check in for our flight down to Melbourne. Only two and a half hours early so not too bad considering! A catchup on my photos with the free wifi and it wasn't long before we were boarding.

We sat next to a lady on our flight who had been in Port Douglas playing golf for 5 weeks! Very jealous! She was from Melbourne and very sweetly gave us some tips for where to go and what to see! A movie and a few tv episodes later and we touched down in Melbourne just after 8pm!

8 degrees and raining! It feels like we've skipped a few months and arrived back in London... Early impressions are positive and it seems like a lovely city, very excited to get exploring. After a short bus and tram ride into town we checked in at our hostel, small room but very clean and modern.

We decided to head straight out for a drink and a bite to eat. The bar we were aiming for had shut for the night so we wandered around and stumbled across a bar looking over the streets below. Relatively quiet but good beers and simple but tasty bar snacks.

A short stop off for doughnuts and we headed back to the hostel. We've just now discovered that tomorrow is the start of Melbourne Fringe! As in the Edinburgh Fringe, where we started our travels, out here in Oz! Carly is very excited and we're looking in to catching a show over the next few days.