G'day mate - Tracie's down under adventure! Days six & seven. Shopping & PD.

[Guest]

Cast - Me - 32 (at the time 31)
Angela - just turned 30 (hence the trip).

Days 6 & 7. Shopping in Melbourne. Port Douglas and dinner at Nautilus.

I’ve decide to write days 6 & 7 together as to be honest I didn’t do anything that exciting on day 6!

Day six.

Ange had booked to go on a tour to the Great Ocean Road, but it was a very early start and jetlag had started kicking in for me I think so I decided to just relax around Melbourne and have a bit of lie-in and chill out day! Ange left around 6:30am to go to the pick-up point, and I eventually rose around 9ish, watched a bit of day-time TV, then got ready and headed out as my stomach was rumbling! *lol* The weather was a bit dull today so decided to head down to Swanston St (main shopping area) and grab some breakfast. When I go there, I headed to Starbucks and ordered a LARGE coffee, and a breakfast panini. After filling my belly I wandered in and out of a few stores and had a mooch around, I also asked a few sales assistants if they knew of anywhere I could get my nails re-done as they were starting to look a bit shabby! But no-one seemed to know of anywhere that did the gel artifical nails, but luckily I remember my friend Lauren mentioning the night before about a shopping centre attached to Melbourne Central train station that might have a place, so decided to head there, I got a bit lost on the way, but finally managed to find it, and lo and behold there was a nail salon, so success, i got my nails back to their former glory!
With my nails back to looking their best, I headed back to Swanston St and shopped! I discovered a store called Target which I would describe as a cross between Primark and New Look, and it was great! Really cheap, so did some damage on my credit card here, buying beach stuff for our move to Port Douglas the next day. After shopping I was feeling a bit tired so grabbed some lunch from Subway and headed back to the hotel for a little snooze.
After sleeping and catching up on the latest happenings from Ramsay St and Summer Bay, and watching one episode of Jamie Oliver’s show ‘Fifteen Australia’, Ange was back and we went out, grabbed some burgers and headed back to the hotel to pack. Went to sleep about 11ish ready for our early morning departure to Port Douglas.


Day seven.


We had a fairly early flight to Cairns today so was up and out of the hotel by 7:30am. Got a taxi outside to the airport, and checked in at the Virgin Blue counter for our flight. I had to pay $20 excess baggage, but was expecting more to be honest! Check-in was very smooth, and we were through departures within 30 mins. We browsed in the shops for awhile, and then got a smoothie and headed to our gate. Nothing much to say about the flight really, Virgin Blue are one of Australia’s budget airlines, so no seatback TV or in-flight entertainment so to speak of, but the crew were great, really friendly and fun, and there was food and drink to purchase if you wanted a snack. The flight to Cairns was about 3 and a half hours so snoozed a bit and read my book and the time, well, it flew by! *lol*
Touched down in Cairns around 12:30pm, and as soon as we stepped outside the plane the heat hit us, Cairns was a balmy high 80s, and the sun was beaming down, my kind of weather! As we had flown internally there were no security checks to go through so we just exited the plane straight to the baggage claim area. After rescuing our luggage we headed over to the transfer desk as I had pre-booked a transfer from Cairns to Port Douglas which is about about 1 and half hours drive away. There was about 10 people transferring to PD and other resorts along the way, so after packing all our luggage into the trailer, we were into our minibus and off!
It is a fairly long drive to PD from Cairns, but, the scenery along the way more than makes up for it, half the journey is on winding roads right next to the ocean, and there are loads of tiny untouched beaches, it’s really beautiful.
We had booked a room at the Outrigger Beach Club, which was Outrigger’s newest resort, they have 3 others in PD, our one had only been open two weeks so the bus driver wasn’t familiar with it at all, so drove straight past it! It did actually say the hotel’s name in massive letters outside though, so how he missed it I do not know! *lol* After arguing with him at the next stop that he’d missed our hotel (he didn’t think I knew what I was talking about being a tourist!) he grudgingly consented to go back to check, and guess what? I was right! I felt sufficiently smug, especially with him being a local and all!
Well what can I say about the hotel? It is beautiful. All white, in a kind of villa style, it’s a stone’s throw from Four Mile beach, and a five minute walk from Macrossan St, the main street in PD. Our luggage was whipped away by the concierge and we checked in without problems and soon we were checking out our room.





The room was fairly compact, but really nice, and everything was brand new, I don’t think our room had been used before because it had that new smell as you walked in the door!
While the room lacked in size, the balcony and view more than made up for it.


(Spa bath on our balcony!)


(seating area on balcony)


(view from our balcony!)

So all in all we were very pleased with it, and I would recommend this resort to anyone!

After dumping our stuff in our room and getting changed we headed out to explore PD. Now to be honest, this would probably take all of 30 mins as you can walk from one side of town to the other in this time! The main street is Macrossan st, which is where all the shops, bars and restaurants are situated. At the end of Macrossan is the marina and a small shopping mall which houses a tourist info centre and more restaurants as well as small boutique type shops. I, of course, found more clothes to purchase and managed to buy a great white top which I wore to death while I was in Oz and still do now!

We wandered back towards our hotel and slipping into the laidback vibe decided to have some tapas and a couple of wines at a place called Zinc which was opposite our hotel. This bar became our fave place in PD and we spent every evening here before moving onto other places. It had a quite a trendy feel but was still very laidback.

We headed back to our hotel and chilled out for awhile, I sat on the balcony and took in the view mainly! Then we got ready for our dinner reservation. Now, while I was planning this trip, I spent many an hour over on the Trip Advisor website on various Australian forums, where I gain invaluable advice on restaurants, Nautilus was billed as the place not to miss if you were in PD, so I managed to get a reservation for 8pm on our first night. It was fairly close to our hotel, but kinda situated up in at the edge of the rainforest, it’s hard to explain, but you really do actually feel like you are sitting eating in the middle of the rainforest! The restaurant is all open air, they have plastic covering that they can put over the eating area if it does rain.



I took pictures of our meals, but I can’t remember 100% what we had! *lol* I think Ange had salmon:



and I think I had tuna:



Ange also had some kind of starter, which I don’t have a clue what it was!



All in all we had a fabulous meal here, with some great Aussie wines, and a very relaxing atmosphere, I’d definitely recommend it to anyone going to PD.

We took a leisurely stroll back to the hotel, and hit the sack after a great first day!

[scottfeltham]

another great day,food looks lovely
scott

[ely3857]

Hotel looks amazing



Jodie

[gail33]

What a great hotel, loving the photo's.