Australia Day Five: One More Day in Darwin

We had pretty vague plans for our last day in Darwin. We slept in and checked out of our hotel pretty late. Our flight out of Australia left in the early evening, so we had almost a whole day to spend hanging around. Our first order of business was food, and I was eager to try a place I'd been eyeballing on our map since we arrived in Australia. It was called Simply's, and specialized in healthy vegetarian food. Bryan was less enthusiastic, but good-naturedly allowed himself to be dragged along. Man, I was SO glad we found that little place. It was THE best meal I had in Australia, and I didn't even have to feel guilty about eating it! Bryan seemed to enjoy his falafel, although he was perhaps a little less enthusiastic than me.

Mexican pie and SIX kinds of salad. Curried pasta salad was my fave.

While hanging out at the restaurant, we dug through our wallets and admired all our Australian cash. It's so pretty! I think every country has more colorful currency than the US!

Like Monopoly money, but with kangaroos on it

After lunch, we walked over to a little Irish pub and had some cider while we watched bowls on TV. Have you ever seen bowls?! Apparently it's some huge thing in Australia. It's kind of like bocce ball, except that instead of doing it casually at a cookout with your family like Americans do in their backyards, Australians do it professionally at bowls clubs and they are DEAD SERIOUS about it. It was pretty fun to watch, so I see how people get so into it.

Eventually we peeled ourselves away from a riveting bowls match and walked over to the Esplanade. There's a path along the Esplanade that meanders along through a park area and along the water, but there isn't really any beach to lounge around on. We did see some neat stuff, including some more birds.

Rainbow bee-eater

Two zebra doves

In our aimless wanderings, we meandered into a historical district with cool old buildings and neat sculptures. One of the most impressive buildings was the Christchurch Anglican Cathedral, built in 1902 and still in use as a church today. The church even survived being hit by a bomb during World War II!

Christchurch Anglican Cathedral

The sculptures scattered around the historical district were pretty cool. These were two of my favorites.

Reminded me of demons!

Tawny frogmouth owl sculpture named "Chinute Chinute"
by amazingly named artist Koolpinyah Barnes

We wandered town a while longer, but the historical district was really the last interesting thing we saw before heading back to the airport, where we had a very strange dinner at Fannie Bay Ale House. We got nachos that had....marinara sauce and mozzarella cheese?! Probably the strangest interpretation of nachos I've ever seen. It's like something I'd come up with when we're running low on groceries.

After dinner and a very thorough security screening (Australia does not mess around about airport security), we boarded our Jetstar flight back to Singapore. It was very strange - that flight was the last time that we would be flying back into Singapore! But more on that later...

Oh yeah! Did I mention that we're finalists in the Singapore Blog Awards?! It would be super if you'd vote for us!