Travelling There 4th April

I never quite know how to document the travel, because the days get blurred. Not that it's complicated this time - one day to Cairns (via Brisbane) and then Cairns to Haneda, Tokyo, the second day. Which is not very efficient (both that we can't fly direct to Cairns and that we can't make it line up on the one day).

To make it even less efficient, the flight from Adelaide was moved to a very uncivilised 6am. So we were up at 4am and by the time we were on our first flight I was in that state where you can't work out if you're hungry, thirsty, tired or some combination. Brief transit in Brisbane then on to Cairns. With our detour to the lounge before we boarded the fiurst flight, I managed three breakfasts.

I will digress here to explain that at the start of the year I got very enthusiastic about new luggage and I decided that aluminium cases were the way to go - preferably with latches rather than zips. They're a bit heavier, but robust and the odd dent just adds to their character. So I bought the first one on sale in January, and this was its first trip.


Lynn was pretty dubious to begin with, and now she's convinced these are a terrible sort of case. I don't know - we've never had one really damaged at all before, and to wreck this one on its first outing does suggest that statistically it is not reliable. I can also imagine that a hard case just doesn't bounce back from a knock. On the other hand, something must have hit it pretty hard to inflict this much damage - the wheels were distorted and the extending handle was unusuable, so the whole case was pushed out of shape. This also gave us something to do... we walked the few blocks from our nice hotel on the Esplanade to a shopping centre and bought a new suitcase. Fortunately they're very light these days, because there were no taxis about and we carried it back (with a stop for a pizza and drink). Then there was repacking things, and filling in the paperwork to try to claim back the cost of the case. We'll see how that goes.

For dinner we walked about then ate on the Esplanade.




Location: 68/72 Abbott St, Cairns City QLD 4870, Australia

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