breakfast on the continent

Yesterday, I was able to have my usual yogurt and granola, but European style - Greek yogurt, muesli (which so far as I can tell is granola with dried fruit in it), and honey. And I've probably had a decent gallon of tea in the few days I've been here.

Today, Mom made an Irish breakfast for me (her side of the family is mainly Irish) - so that was eggs with potatoes and peppers and onions, and more tea.

There are neat theaters here called Gold Class Theaters. Each viewing room has about 30 seats, and the seats are recliner chairs with a little table between every two chairs. The food is more like restaurant food, and you order that ahead of time and indicate when you want it brought in to you (ie, you can have nibbles every half hour, if you so desire), and you can have wine or beer or even champagne if you like. We saw Eragon, which wasn't a half-bad flick - the blue dragon was the best part.

I spent this morning on the beach, and I have a nice little burn on my upper back to show for it (there's always that one spot that's hard to get to). See requisite beach photo on the right. There were only a handful of people on the beach, so I walked down a bit toward the lighthouse and had a good long stretch of sand and surf and rocks all to myself. And can I just say how horrible the smell of beached seaweed is?

We're leaving for Cairns tomorrow morning, blearingly early, to see the Great Barrier Reef and to take the tram up over the rainforest. (Yes, I'm getting on another plane, but this is only a two-hour plane ride.) I'll be back on Friday afternoon, so no blogs until then.

By the way, the Australians won the cricket match today. These games can go on for days. This one I think went on for nearly five days. This particular match was playing for the ashes, and Wikipedia explains the history of this match far better than I could.