So... last night we decided to go and have a meal in the hostel's very own resturant. Kinda wish I'd not bothered!
Maybe it's just me, but Austrailia doesn't work like the UK. There's no signage for anything - it's up to you know or workout how everything is done without losing ones dignity.
I went up to the bar and asked if they were still serving food. Mistake one. Clearly the bar is not a place to be asking about food. The unsign-posted resturant is where I should be going to ask about food.
"How do I know?! Maybe you should try asking in the resturant", I'm told.
Great... there are many ways in which it could have been better worded in order to not make me feel like a dick... so we walk into the "resturant"... and wonder if we should just pick a table and sit at it... or wait to be seated.... we look around and decide to pick a table and sit at it and the wait to be served... it seems that this is clearly not the thing to do... what we should actually do is walk to the front bit by the kitchen hatch and tell them what we want. To make this difficult we need to do this without having seen the menu... "What do you want?", we're asked as soon as we arrive at the front... "I don't know I've only just arrived here". We pickup a menu!
So, we order food and get given a magic flashy clay-pigeon. I'm not going to embarass myself further by asking how the fuck it's used! I take it and head back to our table...
I decide that possibly the flashy thing is an over engineered table number thingy... a posh number on a big stick... you know so they press a button and the thing flashes away and lets the waitress find us.
Wrong.
After observation of the other folks, the thing flashes... and vibrates... and what it means is go to the front and collect your food.
Buzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz. flash flash...
We go up to collect our food. I notice the "tip jar". Fuck that!
We carry the stuff back to our table which has now got some other people sat at it. I stare at them and they offer to move. Damn straight.
We eat the meal, which is alright I guess and get out of there as quickly as possible!
And the flight to Cairns... well the trip to the airport was pretty uneventful... and it now appears that the CityRail ticket machine things don't steal your ticket when it's used up... the one we found on the other day must have just been hungry.
There's signs up at the station entry place apologising for last night's farce with the bridge... (turns out it made national news!) which was nice of them.
We check-in using the magical self-checkin things and dump our bags - and don't have to show any ID. Then we go through security - don't need to show the boarding pass... then we get on the plane... without showing any ID, only the boarding pass. Basically... we managed to travel 2000 miles (or something like that... will check when I get home) on a plane without showing anyone any ID to prove who we were... crazy.
The plane trip seemed remarkably quick... and the only downside was the girl in the row directly behind us who unfortunatly didn't just get motion sickness, but also got motion shittness. The air hostesses comment will go down in history... "Awwwwwww, has she been sick and pooing". Yeah... awwwww bless - isn't it cute, indeed. I managed very well not to start a wave of vomit down the plane. It smelt absolutly awful - kinda like shit and sick combined, in case you were wondering.
When at the airport we called for our free shuttle bus to the hostel. The driver seemed cool - already seemed like the people in this place might be more approachable than in Sydney.
We're in the room now... let's just say, it's the Hilton compared with the room in Sydney (the first or the second!) We've got all the modcons... Air Con... Fridge... our own shower... space.... lots of space... the kids next door might begin to piss us off... to top it all off... we've got a ticket for a free meal every night at a local pub. I wonder if they have flashing clay pigeons there too... or if it's more service orientated than in Sydney!