Flying Far From Home

Our trip began on the afternoon of Friday May 1st. We flew on a three hour flight from Seattle to Los Angles. Then on a 14 hour flight from Los Angles to Brisbane (pronounced Bris-bin).  When we landed in Australia it was actually 6:00 AM on Sunday May 3rd. Unfortunately that wasn’t the end of our flying for the day, we still had a two and a half hour flight from Brisbane to Cairns (pronounced Cans). Our flight from Brisbane to Cairns was beautiful. We flew along the coast and Bryan was able to get some great shots of the Great Barrier Reef. 

When we landed in Cairns our first travel obstacle began; driving. Australians drive on the right side of the car and on the left side of the road. Fortunately, Bryan picked it up rather quickly but we had some unnerving times when we both saw the oncoming traffic and panicked that we were on the wrong side because it was so unnatural to us. It was funny to observe him driving because everything was totally different. The windshield wipers and turn signals were on the opposite sides as well so every time we went to turn Bryan would accidently turn on the windshield wipers first then the turn signal. Bryan did very well driving considering he had been up for 32 hours. He only drove on the wrong side once; fortunately, it was in a residential area and he caught himself rather quickly.

We stayed outside of Cairns in one of the northern beaches called Palm Cove. We really enjoyed Palm Cove because it was a quiet beach town and not as touristy as most of the larger reef towns. Our hotel was on the beach and we enjoyed walking down the beach to dinner.