We were worried about getting back to Darwin in time to return the car, so we drove straight from Katherine to the Darwin Airport. There we tried to check our bags -- about 12 hours early. The clerk said no -- no check in until 10:30PM for our 1:30AM flight. This happened around noon. We were supposed to return the car around 2. Our next objective was to find a hotel room so we could leave our luggage there while we looked around Darwin. We stopped at four places. None had rooms, but one, the Frogshopper Backpackers, had dorm beds. We took them. (We found out there were several events in town filling up the hotels.) We got a key to a room with 5 bunkbeds, and stashed all our luggage there.
Then we drove over to meet the guy we rented the car from. We waited an hour and he didn't show. The lady at the store there, who seemed to know him, called him for us, and we got permission to just leave the car there. Then the lady very kindly offered to drive us back to our hotel.
From there we walked to downtown to find some food and to mail the digeridoo.
We went to the post office first, waited in a long line, (well, not long, but slow) and got it mailed.
For dinner, we wanted to go to this place called Litchfield 10. It was about 4:30. We showed up, but the sign on the door said they wouldn't upen until 6! WE were pretty hungry by that point and we walked by a few more restaurants, but none of them were yet open for dinner. Eventually we found a cute, modern little coffee shop that was open. Jason had soup and I had a muffin -- both VERY good, especially after all the roadhouse and hotel food we'd had for the last couple weeks.
After this snack we made our way down to the beach. There was a very nice grass park running along the bluff above the beach. We walked along it for awhile and foudna steep path down to the oceanside. The beach was small and quite rocky, with several sea shells. We saw a small tree growing out of the ocean, about 10m offshore.
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Large -- Medium |
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Large -- Medium |
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Large -- Medium |
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Large -- Medium |
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Large -- Medium |
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Large -- Medium |
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Large -- Medium |
We headed back up to the park. By now it was late enough that Litchfield Ten was open so we headed there for dinner. It was tucked down in a back road but when we went inside it was really nice, decorated in sort of an asian style. There were garage-sized doors opening up the inside to the patio, which had gardens, a fountain, and chinese hanging lanterns. The food was really good.
We walked back to the hotel, and I learned a secret. If I tied my shoes really, really tight, my feet hurt less!
The Frogshopper seemed like a fun, jovial place. Mostly it was people our age, 20s & 30s, and they would sit on the patios and balconies and chat. We went to bed about 8, and I never heard anyone else come to bed. We dot up at 11:30 to go to the airport.
