Adventures in Cairns

Today we ventured out to see what Cairns had to offer. We spent some of the afternoon shopping at the factory outlet mall here. I drove there on the wrong side (to our standards) of the road. It was so cool! Unfortunately I didn't realize how cool it would be and didn't take my camera.

We went down to the pool just outside our hotel room, and hung out, enjoying the beautiful weather. Then, we went down to the Esplanade, which is the street and boardwalk area by the ocean. It is full of great shops and restaurants. We went to a seafood restaurant and tried Barramundi (a local australian fish) which is a white fish and absolutely delicious! Derek also had kangaroo (which tastes like a very tender beef) and crocodile, which had a chewy texture and tasted like a combination between scallops and chicken. We then walked down the esplanade where we saw boomerangs, UGGS, lots of honey and macadamia nuts (grown locally), and digeridoos. Digeridoos are a weakness of mine. every time Derek and I go to a msic store in Winnipeg, I always go and look at them. They are even cooler here, they are works of art. It's also neat because in each store where they are sold is usually someone who is demonstrating how to play them. The aboriginal art here is also really awesome.

While walking we tried dessert crepes (fresh fruit with custard and whipped cream) which were amazing and gelato. The gelati here is the best I have ever had, and I love gelati in Winnipeg. The fruit flavors are even more intense and include flavors such as passionfruit. There was also a cute shop offering samples of soft salt water taffy-like candy. The flavor they were offering as a sample was some sort of blue plum, and it was so soft and delicious, we went back and bought a bagful of mixed flavors. I can't remember all of them but they included a variety of fruit flavors I hadn't heard of before. We also saw a guy performing with flaming sticks (I don't know what they are actually called), but it was neat. The weather here is still gorgeous at almost 9:00 pm, it's actually too warm for me to wear a cardigan with my tank top and shorts! It's going to make it hard to go back to the unseasonably cold weather in Sydney and even harder to come home to snow.