Thursday – March 27, 2025
We fly to Cairns, Australia
Today was spent preparing to leave the ship for our excursion to more of Australia. Our group will consist of 9 passengers (Thomas & Monica, Olga, Bridgette, Felix, Simon and the 3 of us), 1 staff from excursions (Giulio) and a guide from Australia (Sandra). We wheeled our suitcases to the theatre in the early afternoon then had to wait until Australian authorities could verify each of our identities with our passports. Completing that we boarded our coach (seats 57 – there were the 11 of us and a driver so plenty of room for everyone to have a window). For the next hour or so we drove through the countryside near Perth and saw lots of vineyards.
We stopped at a local candy shop called Mondo Nougat. The purpose of the stop was to review what we would be doing for the balance of the 27th and in general what would happen until we returned to the ship on April 4th. We were each given a sample of the nougat candy. The nougat candy with which I am familiar has bits of chewy candy in it but not nuts and other stuff (like the samples we were given). I like what I’m used to over this new wrinkle.
Given time to look over the candy, honey and other items in the store we returned to the coach for a drive through Perth. Unlike yesterday, this time our guide told us about what we were viewing. As it began to get dark we arrived at the restaurant where we would dine before our late night flight to Cairns.
The Meat & Wine Co. was an interesting restaurant. From the interior decoration to the selections we had for dinner it was unique in all aspects. We were shown to a private room in the rear (photo of it if you check out the link above). In today’s media there are photos of a couple of the starters, mains and one dessert. They specialize in Wagyu beef. Both Jan and I had the 500g (1.1 pound) Wagyu rump steak. It was incredible. I didn’t know I could eat that much but it melted in your mouth. It came with a large Caesar salad and peppercorn sauce. Kelsey had a chicken kabob (see photo) that was served in a method I had never seen. For starters Kelsey and Jan had bruschetta (see photo). Dessert for all of us was lava cake with ice cream.
I’m surprised we didn’t fall asleep in the bus on the way to the airport with all the food we had. But we didn’t. Boarded our flight and next thing we knew the time was 3 hours later plus the flight time and we were landing at the Cairns airport.