Australia in two weeks

As I mentioned in a previous post, after a rough start we finally made it to Australia. If you have not read about it yet, I urge you to take a peek at that post. I’d like to think the one positive thing about that experience is that I can use this platform to spread awareness about the issue. So please, make my day and go read that post by clicking here.

So now that I am done with my PSA of the day, let’s get on to more fun things and talk about what we did once we landed on the Island Continent.

We spent 2 weeks in Australia and used Melbourne as our base. We opted to do this for several reasons – primarily that we had family there and wanted to spend as much time with them as possible. The bonus was that we could leave the bulk of our luggage there and book domestic flights without having to shell out extra for baggage fees.

Yarra River, Melbourne

Here is a rough outline of our two week itinerary in Australia.

Day 1 – Land in Melbourne
Day 2 – Evening flight to Cairns
Day 3, 4 – Time in Cairns
Day 5 – Daytrip to Kuranda, evening flight to Melbourne
Day 6 – Morning flight to Tasmania
Day 7 – Evening flight to Sydney
Day 8,9 – Time in Sydney
Day 10 – Evening flight to Melbourne
Day 11, 12 – Time in Melbourne
Day 13 – Evening flight to UAE

I will be posting more details about each of these places in the days to come and will update this post with the relevant links.

Needless to say, two weeks is simply not enough time to properly see, and more importantly experience, Australia. We did, however, manage to cover quite a bit of ground in the short time we had.

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#Throwback to our time in #tasmania where the bounty of #mothernature took our breath away at every turn. Steep rocky slopes interspersed with lush green plains dotted with fluffy sheep and towering trees. It was the stuff of #dreams. It almost made me wish I was a landscape artist 💚💙 #darlingescapes #sheisnotlost #australia #Beautifuldestinations #Tourtheplanet #Followmefaraway #packyoursuitcase #Abmtravelbug #Thatsdarling #madtravel #tourypics #globewanderer #globaltravelhub #TLPicks #femaletravelbloggers #ladiesgoneglobal #letsgosomewhere @wonderful_places #uaeblogger #auhblogger

A post shared by Diya (@diyalogues) on Jan 22, 2017 at 8:12am PST

Although there was a lot of shuttling around we didn’t find it too tiring as we frequently touched down at home and got to relax for a bit. Had we been traveling without any local base, we might have dropped one of the places on our itinerary to make the most of each destination and not to feel too rushed.

That being said we had at least a couple of slow days where we did just one thing or two so if you have the stamina and a fast-paced, jam-packed vacation is more your style, you could use those days to squeeze in a few more activities and possibly even another stop!

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It's hard to describe the sense of wonder as you come face to face with one of the most iconic #landmarks in the world. I caught my first peek of the tip of those magnificent sails as I wandered through the maze of streets leading up to the #sydneyharbour. The tingle of anticipation, the quickening pulse, the craning of the neck to speed up that meeting by a precious second or two… All to emerge onto the harbor and see her in all her dazzling sun-drenched brilliance. It was one of those rare moments I feel will remain etched in memory forever 💙💛 #isthisforreal #pinchmeimustbedreaming #amazingaustralia #sydneyoperahouse #operahouse #sydneysiders #sydney #circularquay #australia #australianadventure #travelgram #instaplans #instatravel #traveldiaries #wanderlust

A post shared by Diya (@diyalogues) on Sep 18, 2016 at 9:28pm PDT

If I am being completely honest, we found tourism in Cairns to be a bit on the pricey side. Cairns was by far THE most expensive leg of our trip. Hotel rates didn’t seem to be worth the price we were paying. Or maybe we UAE babies are just spoilt by the superior hospitality standards here?

Tours ran over USD 100 per person on average which is considerably higher than we are used to paying. There didn’t seem to be too many convenient alternatives for a self-tour using public transport. That being said, the rest of our stops all had well documented alternatives for self-exploration. But I’ll get into more details on that in future posts.

Cairns Esplanade

Needless to say, we would love to return to Australia someday. There is simply way too much we had to skip due to time constraints and there is enough left to justify another visit. Don’t you just love it when a destination leaves you hankering for more? I sometimes feel that if you leave a place feeling like you have seen enough, you really haven’t seen enough.

I can’t wait to pen down more about our Australian adventure and to relive our memories with all of you.

Until next time…