Yesterday we drove about 90 minutes back down the coast to Cairns, the town known as the Gateway to the Great Barrier Reef due to a massive marketing campaign in the 70s. We learned this during our walking tour that we took yesterday evening. I think I’ve said this before, but we are big fans of taking a walking tour to get oriented to a new city, and this tour did not disappoint. Shout out to Cairns Urban Walking tours–highly recommend if you are even in Cairns.

To be honest, there are not a lot of reasons to come to Cairns beyond snorkeling and diving. It is traditionally a backpacker town, so a bit grungy. It also has no beach–a gorgeous coastline surrounded by mountains, but no beaches. However, according to our tour guide, they have been trying to gentrify the town for the past couple of decades. They have built a beautiful esplanade along the water, put in a (free, again!) public pool and artificial beach, and built upscale hotels and an upscale restaurant district to attract more tourist money. We are staying in a lovely four star hotel on the water-the Shangri-La. We got it for about $20 for three nights via a credit card deal (plus a free, really nice breakfast buffet, a $100 dining credit, and a free bottle of champaign, so we’re essentially being paid to stay here), but the normal rate is $270 per night, a real bargain for this level of hotel. It reflects the town–again, not a whole lot to do–and the fact that it is shoulder season, but for us it is a great time to rest, hang out by the pool, and have a few good meals.

Here’s the view from our balcony:

Here are some photos from our walk around town and our tour:

We had scheduled a snorkeling tour for this morning, but there is a high wind warning, so we decided to cancel and hope for better weather tomorrow. Because the reef is quite a way offshore, snorkeling (or diving) involves a long boat ride out and back. The snorkel companies use very fast boats to keep their tours to a reasonable length; very fast boat rides in very choppy water are not super fun.

What is fun is my new bird identifier app! The birds here are so different from home and often so loud that I decided to get an app to figure out what we are seeing and hearing. The app I have says it only has about 45% of the birds in this area, but so far I have identified about a dozen. I am going to look for an Australia-based app to get that other 55%.

Since I have some time on this lazy morning, I will give you some general observations we have had about traveling in Australia, for those who are curious.

First, the food. Other than the vegemite and a delicious ubiquitous soft drink called Lemon Lime Bitters, we have not noticed a whole lot of difference in the menu offerings in restaurants here, at least in the tourist areas we have been in. There is the occasional restaurant with kangaroo and crocodile on the menu, but I suspect that’s for the tourists. Lots of Asian food of various types, lots of Italian, not as much Mexican as we have at home, but what we’ve tried has been familiar (and quite good), lots of seafood here on the coast, and then your typical pub food. The main difference we’ve noticed is that the food here is served lukewarm, not hot. The first couple of times I thought it was just the restaurant, but it is actually a very consistent thing. Google agrees it is a thing here. It is not bad, it just takes some getting used to.

There is no tipping here; as we understand it, the minimum wage is $30 AUD, plus more on weekends and holidays (nicer restaurants charge a surcharge to cover this). Maybe because of this (or maybe it’s just the culture), service is not like what we are used to at home, even in nice restaurants. No one refills your water or asks if you want another drink unless you flag them down. Our tour guide told us there is a shortage of labor, so many service industry jobs are filled by people from other countries with guest worker visas, which only allow them to work for six months in one place–not a lot of time to become good at something. We have had servers from all over–the U.S., the U.K., Asia, Eastern Europe. The worker shortage means that many mid-range restaurants have you wait in line to order at a counter–indeed, one counter for food and another for drinks–instead of taking your order at your table.

Last night we had a great meal sitting on a balcony at an Asian fusion restaurant called Miss Chief, which was highly recommended by our tour guide as a favorite of locals. It was beautiful, the food was beautiful and delicious, and the cocktails were creative and really good. It started pouring rain while we were eating and rained for a good hour, which just added to the experience.

Next, driving in Australia. These are Rich’s thoughts, as I have not yet braved driving on the left. Most of our driving has been on windy coastal roads with one lane each way. Rich likes that they have frequent places for slower cars (often us, and probably most tourists not used to the roads) to pull off and let faster traffic pass. There were probably a dozen places along our long drive where road construction brought traffic down to one lane, with either a person or an automated stoplight system regulating traffic. We both noticed that Australia does a much better job of signage in these situations than we do in the U.S. Plenty of notice with very clear directions, including telling you to turn your hazard lights on when queuing and then reminding you to turn them off. The hardest thing for Rich to get used to is the fact that the turn signal and the windshield wiper controls are switched–a woman from the UK on one of our tours also noted that, so even though they drive on the left, it must not be that way there. Roundabouts took a minute to get use to because you have to yield to the right instead of the left. Rich has made it look pretty easy, but not easy enough for me to try it yet!

O.k., enough rambling for today. We started the day facetiming with Hannah and Arthur, which was such a treat! It’s a gorgeous day–76 degrees and sunny at the moment, but quite windy. I am off to the pool. Rich has already been to the gym and is now off playing is phone game around town. We are definitely enjoying this retirement thing!