I am still not sleeping in in the morning. The rest of the family has well gotten into the rhythm but I seem to need way fewer hours of sleep every night than at home. Which means I am usually up first. So I got up and walked to the supermarket and got a few things for breakfast.
After breakfast at the hotel (“breky” in Australia) we went to the Cairn’s Esplanade.

The Esplanade is a wonderful meeting point for the people of Cairns. Everyday there is an array of free sports classes as well as an outdoor gym. For the kids there is a shady water playground that must be heaven on earth for a four year old.

Just as in Darwin you can’t swim along the coast of Cairns because there are crocodiles in the waters as well as stingers.
Therefore at the end of the Esplanade there is a lagoon swimming pool. It is a pool with walls but has sand on the bottom and the water is salty. It’s a very easy going place. Kids are running around, people are having barbecues at public picnic tables, even a band played under the trees.

Though the sun does not seem strong you have to be really careful as UV radiation is quite high. To warn people at the lagoon there’s a UV indicator.

Talking about indicators, Australians seem to love their signs. There are thousands of warning signs (crocodiles, cliff edges, under water objects, just to name a few. We even saw signs in the middle of Kakadu National Park that in Australia you had to drive on the left side of the road. I mean, come on, if you drove from Darwin- where you probably rented your car- to Kakadu and you hadn’t noticed that it was too late anyway!). The striking thing about a lot of theses signs is: many signs are translated into German, most times as one of the top languages:

Feels a bit like home, doesn’t it?

From the lagoon we wandered to Rusty’s Market on Grafton street, a farm market I had read about. K and I could have spent hours there dreaming up the most delicious dishes.

Unfortunately we had a very basic kitchen setup in the apartment. So we decided on pasta with fresh tomatoes and garlic and oranges for dessert.

But just think about what you could do with these vegetables and fruits …

We had a late lunch at the market. The kids decided on liquid lunch in form of a smoothie with sugarcane and fruit. I had a wonderful Vietnamese beef salad with fresh cilantro (yummie!) and F and B decided on apple tart. Then K discovered that people sipped coconut water directly from the fruit. She got curious and wanted to try it. She even was daring enough to go to the stall and order it herself. The guy took a large knife to the coconut she had picked and cut off the top with one swift movement and then he put a straw in it. K loved it!

With bags full of groceries and a bottle of Yellowtail Cabernet Sauvignon from the bottle store we went to the apartment to relax a bit before dinner.

Tomorrow we will rent a car and head up North to Palm Cove before driving down the coast to Brisbane.