Market Day Saturday 3/22/08

Another bright and shiny morning and a day to catch up on some projects and then "do" Cairns. More fresh fruit and egg muffins for our brekkie and we spend a while getting organized before heading out around 10:00 am. We get a once weekly cleaning of our apartment and this is the day so we have to clean for the cleaner.

Cairns has a big food and produce market in the center of town that is open every Friday, Saturday and Sunday and is our destination for the morning. There are hundreds of booths with local produce, many with a wide array of vegetables, and virtually all have the locally grown fresh fruits. Local pineapples are $2, avocados are 8 for $2, mangoes are $1 a pound and bananas are pennies. We load up as much as possible for our last few days here. We also buy some cookies at a stand from a fellow who goes through the "where are you from?" ritual and then announces that he is a lifetime Green Bay Packer fan. Is there nowhere we can be rid of them? Unfortunately we have already paid for the cookies.

We find an internet cafe and take turns with one of us doing our computer catch-up work while the other meanders around town. It is the ususal blog posting, bookkeeping and booking our Sydney hotel room for our trip home. Everything is finished or, "done and dusted" as they say here. We wander down by the docks looking for lunch and find a series of restaurants along the harbor with ouside tables and a nice breeze. John has a chicken "Pide," a grilled chicken on Turkish bread with avocado and brie, and Mary gets the veggie burger that will last for two lunches. This part of the city is all harbor and no beach and they have again compensated by building a huge swimming lagoon along the shoreline and it is packed on this hot holiday Saturday. The claim is that it is 31-degrees C (88F) with about 50% humidity but in the sun it seems 20-degrees warmer than that. We've read that there is virtually no ozone layer over Australia and that 40% of all Aussies will develop some form of skin cancer. We are more than willing to believe that today.

We have been told that Easter weekend along the coast is not only crowded but many restaurants are closed so we have planned to eat in over the holidays. That advice turns out to be less than true but we are happily commited to home cooking (or take-away) at this point. Tonight it is burgers on the barbie with all the trimmings and some chips and slaw. We munch on our burgers while we watch a movie and sip a very youthfull (cheap) Cabernet and actually stay up past 9:00. The moon is full and it is a pretty part of the world.

Today's local headline: Easter Eggs Banned The Cairns Weekend Post (Hospital boss says 'NO' to chocolate treats for sick kids.)