There's one thing you can say for our trip which is that it has
gone by very quickly because we haven't had a lot of time to just kick
back and relax. Every day we've had planned activities, like our
trip to the Barrier Reef, or have had to get up early so we can catch a
train to a wildlife park, in order to meet our schedule of things we hoped
to do that day.
We're now more than halfway through the trip and finally we had a day to just do what we wanted. We slept late (9 or 10), and planned to spend the day shopping in Cairns at the various shops which cater to the tourist trade. Cairns is a town of 120,000 but it's heavily centered on their fortunate location and thus geared toward tourism. So as we had spent time in Sydney, Cairns, Kuranda, etc we've been thinking about where we should get those heavily desired ornamental souvenirs (from the French for "to remember") for ourselves and those at home who have generously held off on abducting my cats and holding them for ransom until this month's blackmail payment is put in the appropriate secret drop....
So we ventured forth to pick up a few nice but light trinkets. While we know we can't get something for everyone we know, a few may be the recipients of our benificence. We only have so many bags that we can carry back with us with stuff. So we searched the t-shirt shops, the boomerang markets, the hat dealers, and the didgeridoo vendors for things that would be meaningful to certain people.
You'll have to wait until we get home to see what booty we brought back with us. But be sure, it will be cool.
After a return dinner at Monsoon's (gotta love their service, and the food is excellent also), we went through some more shops and then another taxi ride home for to pack. It's an early morning on Sunday - Mother's Day, for our flight to Melbourne.
There's no pictures for today since we didn't really take any of general interest.
But I will fill you in some more on the Navy ships since that picture generated a LOT of email. Click the special page.