Bird’s eye view of Great Barrier Reef

Well, we may not have been able to go to the Great Barrier Reef by boat but we managed to recover by taking a helicopter trip over the GBR this morning. We’re so glad we did! We may never travel here again and to be mere kilometres away from this UNESCO site and not see it would have been a damn shame. The pictures and video are worth a thousand words.

It was another scorcher here so we didn’t feel like doing much after the flight. We visited a tourist information centre and their only suggestion was the aquarium which we weren’t interested in doing. But they did recommend we go for lunch at the RSL - Australia’s version of The Legion. The Legion!?! Why not.

Our Legion sure could learn a lot from the ones here! It had an unbelievable menu, and was very contemporary in decor and attitude. And it was pretty well packed by the time we left. The food was great and reasonably priced.

That’s something we’ve noticed - restaurant meals are somewhat more expensive than what we’re used to in Toronto. For example, a Caesar salad that is meal size with no protein is about AU$22. And we’re not talking fancy restaurants. But tipping isn’t a thing here so you need to readjust your thinking. The other interesting thing about casual restaurants in Australia is that it is quite common for you to go and place your order at a counter and pay for it. It’s then delivered to your table number. We think it may be common because of no tipping so it’s very efficient to have them ring up your order and you just tap and go.

Wanting to escape the heat, we couldn’t really decide what to do after lunch so, when in doubt, go for manicures! We have found in our travels that whenever we’re in a beach town, manicure shops are side-by-side-by -side. Sure enough, we found a strip where there had to be at least 10 in one block. Not surprising, the young women who did our nails were from Thailand.

The men’s final in the Australian Open Tennis was on this evening, so we went to a sports bar for dinner.Read more