G’Day from the top of Australia! I’ve had such a busy 10 days that I’m going to split this between 3 blogs! FYI, I’m sitting on my 5th flight of this adventure and will be on yet another flight later today.
We arrived in Darwin, located on the Top End of Australia in the Northern Territory on Sunday, June 14. We got situated into the hostel (Melaleuca on Mitchell) we would call home for the next 10 days before taking a scenic walk down to the Mindil Markets. Darwin is famous for the Mindil Markets, held every Thursday evening and on Sunday evenings during the dry season. Situated off the beach are booths of crafts, clothes, and food from all over the world. This first Sunday, we just grabbed dinner and headed to the beach to eat, sink our feet in the sand, and watch yet another spectacular sunset. After this summer, I’m going to be spoiled on grabbing dinner, a bottle of wine, and settling in to watch unbelievable sunsets!! This past Sunday, we went back to the markets and did some shopping. Hmmm my bank account could have gone without seeing Mindil Markets again!!! I was able to buy some really neat souvenirs though! We had heard that one really cool way to explore Darwin is on bikes, which our class did together one afternoon. We “loaded up” and headed to the Northern Territory Museum to learn about the Aboriginals in the N.T. Naturally, Sarah and I found the children’s section instead, but much to our disappointment, there was no crafts or things to play with. Upon leaving the museum, we headed down to the Espionage, where we visited a few war memorials. One of them was one of the cannons off a US military ship shot down during WWII by the same Japanese fleet that attacked Pearl Harbor. Other activities we did in Darwin consisted of an afternoon at Crocosaurus Cove playing with baby crocodiles. Sarah and I spent a couple afternoons exploring the shops around Darwin. Darwin was a really neat town with that “beachy” town feel. We also spent a whole afternoon at an internet café uploading pictures and updating our blogs. Laundry was another must while in Darwin after being gone for over 2 weeks! One evening, nine of us from our class walked down to Cullen Bay for a sunset cruise aboard the Spirit of Darwin. We were a little out of place on the cruise (the other cruisers were from a senior citizen tour group!), but the sunset was AMAZING!! We saw some orange sunsets in Fiji, but this was purely a deep RED sunset. After we disembarked, we all went out to dinner before heading to our favorite pub to karaoke. This was one of my favorite evenings in Darwin (any night that ends with a shopping cart ride is a great one in my book!!)—Talk about some bonding time!!! On our last night in Darwin, our entire group went to the Deckchair Cinema (yes, you sit in lawn chairs and the “theatre” is outdoors!) to watch Ned Kelly, a movie about an Australian Icon who was a bushranger in the 1800s. After the movie, we grabbed a late dinner before heading to the hostel to pack. I feel like we did everything in Darwin that we had picked out to do after pouring over travel books. So far, Darwin is my favorite Australian city, but we have many more to visit!!
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