Monday, 19th March 2018
We’ve been home already a week and I am aware that I haven’t finished off my travelogue so here follows a recap of our last morning in Cairns and then our very, very, very long haul back to Amsterdam!
It was Sunday morning March 11th, and you will never guess, we woke up to bright sunshine – Gerry and I looked at each other and though – have we decided too rashly to go back home after some 5 days of continuous rainfall? Well, looking back positively, we left Cairns with a good feeling and certainly as we had gone for a walk towards the older part of Cairns and found Cairns Station, an Art Deco building which was modernised internally to house a very modern shopping mall and food courts. And finally Gerry got to meet Ronald McDonald and share a bench with him! We’ve spent many hours in total using McDonald’s WIFI to be able to send out my blog – it was the best WIFI in the whole of Australia!!! And Gerry learnt to drink McDonald’s milkshake and coffee – also a primeur for him!!
We also saw huge bats hanging from the trees and screeching their heads off at the same time – very scary!
When we arrived back at our hotel we picked up our luggage which was in the storage room and a taxi came to pick us up at 13.30 – and yes it had started raining again!! Well our trip to the airport only took us half an hour and that meant we had a long wait as our flight was at 16.05.
Our first leg of our trip back home was to Melbourne a 3 hour flight going south and then a hectic connection at the international terminal for our flight to Doha – a 14 hour flight!! That broke us up – we didn’t really sleep, however we did watch a few movies till we touched down in Doha. Her we had a 2 hour stop over and gave us some leisure time before taking the last flight of our trip back to Amsterdam – another 7 hours.
When we arrived in Amsterdam, it was bitterly cold and grey – we were met by Monique, Gerry’s daughter and after Gerry had his first smoke in 24 hours, we made our way back to Krimpen – and my little BMW was still packed nicely in its cover!
And now to return to our way of life – seeing sunrise in Krimpen as we drink coffee in the morning and then getting my car going so that I can go back to Deventer and see how everything is at my home!
So this was the end of our three month trip – and we survived each other’s company and had fun on the way!! We’ll be starting to plan our next trip, however before that happens, we have Gerry’s birthday to celebrate – at least I’ve kept my promise to his (grand) children that I would bring him back home before his birthday!!!
Hope you enjoyed reading my blog as much as I enjoyed writing it – I will need to have this printed it out so that I can refer back to it when I’m sitting in my armchair tucked under a blanket and reminiscing about those adventures down under!!
