Friday, August 29, 2008

Cairns Accommodations: 201 Lake Street

So I know I already posted about our snorkeling and diving excursion to the Great Barrier Reef, but I thought I would back up a bit, now that I'm home and don't have to compete with others for internet usage time at hotels. So here's more about our trip from the very beginning.

We took a 16 hour flight from San Francisco to Sydney, and were very impressed with Qantas' service and especially with their meals. We had a short layover in Sydney, then took another four hour flight to Cairns. We'd left SFO at 10:40 PM on Saturday night, and arrived in Cairns on Monday at 11:10 AM, due to their 17 hour time difference. Craziness!

We were very relieved to arrive to this after such a long period of time on aircrafts:










The only downside was that, with all of the hard surfaces throughout our room and the entire building, we could hear every single little noise, including when our next door neighbor had a coughing fit in the middle of the night.

The owner was incredibly friendly and helpful. When we told her we were planning to do a snorkeling and diving excursion the following day, she gave us loads of information about the different companies. Shweetie had already decided to go with a particular company, Tusa, and when we told the owner, she didn't say anything at first. She asked us why we'd picked that company, then hesitatingly told us, while prefacing it with, "I'm going to say something, even though I probably shouldn't," that several other recent vacationers had gone on a Tusa dive the previous week, and had commented that the staff had been abrupt and not very friendly. Based on that feedback, we instead decided to go with one of the owner's recommendations, and Shweetie's second choice company. We were so glad we did, because we had an awesome time on our dive with Ocean Freedom!

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