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Sophie And Tami Were Here
Saturday 21st April
Journal entry brought to you by Tami (loving Tropic Days)
I always seem to get to write about the days when we don't do anything other than travel! We caught the greyhound this morning to Cairns. It was a bit emotional as it was our last greyhound trip, so Dave took some photos of us by the bus that we will never ride again...sigh......can't say I'm going to miss the sleepiness that comes with the journeys.....but I'm sure it will be the same on the Kiwi Experience. Tropic Days Hostel picked us up, we got to the hostel and were told that reception opened at 4pm for our check in. We were let into our room meanwhile, and after having a good nosey around, we headed into town. The hostel itself is lovely. The rooms are really uncrowded, with only three or 4 beds to a dorm (ours has three), and we share a kitchen with only two other rooms. We also have our own shared community room, kitchen and dining table, which we again share with these other two rooms. The whole place has an atmosphere like being at home, and (this may sound weird), the toilet paper is really really nice, and we haven't had that in a while. None of this papery rubbish, just nice Andrex or something. Mmmm. And it's really clean. And there are no bunk beds, all the beds are individual, which is LOVELY. Plus there's free tea and coffee throughout the day, and free evening meals 5 nights a week! When we got into town (took about 45 minutes, what a mission!), we went to the Bi-Lo supermarket, and looked round the shops. Cairns is a really odd city, it has no hustle and bustle like Brisbane, none of the glitz of Sydney, and there are no high rise buildings or massive office buildings. The whole place feels like a town, it has a really nice atmosphere.
We then decided to ring our parents as there were many pay phones in the city and only one at the hostel, and I managed to get through to mine although Sophie decided hers must be in
Spain. It was really good to talk to my parents as it's been like two weeks with no contact at all and I missed them. I felt a bit rubbish for Sophie as I know I would have been gutted if my parents hadn't been in, but she seemed okay. But then we had a brainwave! Why not call a communal mum?! Someone who is a mummy to both of us, who we haven't spoken to for a while and miss LOADS......! Yep, I'm sure most of you have guessed, we are talking about our blog's biggest fan, and our future mother-in-law....SUE NIX! Woop!!!! I know that she will be reading this at some point, and I would like to take this opportunity to give her a HUGE shout out as we miss her so much, and also to say thank you SOOOO much for the awesome presents, which we use constantly! It was SOOO great to talk to you.
After getting a bit homesick and then reminiscing about good times round the Nix's (like New Year pancakes! And all the fabulous dinners we've had there, and putting up the Christmas tree!) and cheering up, we caught a cab back to the hostel as it was about 7.30pm and we knew that reception closed at 8 and we needed to check in. No reprimands about wasting money and being lazy please, we would have walked had the time not have flown past us.
We got back to the hostel and went to check in, and then got very worried when the scary woman on reception told us that our beds had been sold because we hadn't come in to check in at 4.....we explained we were sorry (I say 'we', it was actually me, Sophie went red and silent) and we thought it'd meant that we could check in any time AFTER four......it was only when I asked if we could go and collect our stuff and she said 'We sold that too' that it dawned upon us that she was joking....she seemed so serious though!! Having got over that initial cold exterior, getting chatting to her we actually found out that the receptionist was a lot of fun, and really really hilarious. She said that we'd taken the joke really well and for that we had earned brownie points!
We collected our free meal tokens and headed off to the Woolshed for a free dinner that evening. We both had spaghetti napoletana, which was nice, but really spicy, and I again managed to excel in the 'Get free upgrades' thing that seems to keep happening to me, the barmaid gave me a large orange juice for the price of a small! Wicked! We began chatting to three Australian guys called Gordon, Paul and Elliot, who I don't think met many girls as they kept insisting that we meet up with them later, and we were like 'Yeah that's cool', and they practically made us promise we'd come back. They told us their whole itinery for the night, which bars they'd be going to etc and we were a bit like.....mm.....no. This is weird. Anyway we had also arranged to see Holly and Luke that night so we told the three of them that we'd be back later.....which we had no intention of being. We went to Luke and Holly's hostel and just stayed there for the rest of the evening, catching up on the week we've had apart (which is really long in the Holly-Luke-Sophie-Tami-East-Coast-Australia-Travelling-History), and it was really cool to be hanging out with them again. They were going to Cape Trib the next day for one night, then they had one night left in Cairns before flying to Aukland via Brisbane (same flight that we're doing on Saturday). We arranged to go out on their free night, then wandered back to our hostel and went to bed. Had a really nice day. Tropic Days is awesome (-:
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