Saturday, 3 August 2019 – Brisbane to Cairns

Our trip to Dublin started in Brisbane, as you would expect. Rather than the typical route through Dubai, London or Abu Dhabi, we went via Cairns. On Saturday afternoon we departed Brisbane on Qantas, arriving to a wet and cold(ish) Cairns. Flight time was about 2.5 hours, similar to Brisbane to Melbourne.

We were staying at Rydges Esplanade in the middle of Cairns, on check-in we got upgraded to an ocean view room (Tick Ist upgrade lol) with views out over the water. Upon arrival we noted the seafood buffet. Given we would not have the opportunity to eat fresh Aussie produce we gave it a crack. It was quite nice, with the chef cooking up various dishes such as prawns, steak, calamari or chicken wings in front of you. Oh and Ros decided to eat a dessert which had a strawberry jelly on top….. found out later it must have been made with real strawberries and need I say OMG later on the plane.

[This bit was written by Ros about me!] After dinner I had a little splinter that was so sore that we had to find a chemist to obtain splinter removers and antiseptic. We walked to the chemist and on the way back it started raining so we had a lovely walk in the rain. Ros had a go at digging a hole to China in my thumb…to get the splinter out. I am still healing from the pain and agony of my little splinter.

We decided that after that it was bed time, with an early start to be at the airport on time for a 10:50 am departure. It was still drizzling outside so there wasn’t much of a view out over the water.