Day 7 Australia - Cairns to Alice Springs

Saturday 28th February, 2015 - Depart Cairns

We go to Pie Face again for breakfast. It is Saturday morning and town is bustling.

Transfer from Pacific International Hotel Cairns to Cairns Airport.
Transfer Type: Seat in Coach
Pick up: 9:00am
Drop off: 9:30am

Please check-in at Cairns Airport, Terminal 2 for:
QANTAS
QF 1949
Depart Cairns Airport at 11:20am
Arrive Alice Springs Airport Saturday 28 February 2015 at 1:10pm

The airport is tiny but full of shops and restaurants.

We fly Qantas, what a pleasure after JetStar. We walk out to the plane, John asks attendant if we are there yet and he says its a fuel saving initiative!!

The flight is not very full either.
Leaving Cairns.

Lordy! We are even given a sandwich, which turns out to be delicious!!

Pick-up car at Hertz (for 8 days)
Time: 2:00pm
Date: Saturday 28th February, 2015
SANTA TERESA RD
ALICE SPRINGS Alice Springs

We have paid for the GPS in our package even though the woman says we don't need it. She asks us to check it before we leave. Do we? no.
We also have to pay $500 plus tax because we are dropping the car off in Adelaide.
The money never stops flowing from our pocket.

Our car, John finally has to go inside to ask how to start it!! The car is huge!!

We drive in circles trying to find the hotel. GPS is of no use it is set to Italian and I can't figure out how to change it.
We spot a Hertz office at another hotel, no joy, it is closed.

We persevere and find it using cell phone GPS. It is a Hilton but I don't think the clerk ever attended any of their training courses. Our room is WAY at the back.

Arrive Alice Springs
Right in the centre of 'The Centre' is Alice, surrounded by the MacDonnell Ranges. Alice
Springs is an oasis in this vast land. It began in 1872 as an overland telegraph station and, today, it
combines the vigour of frontier life with the convenience of modern facilities.
Accommodation:
DoubleTree by Hilton Alice Springs
82 Barrett Drive,
Alice Springs

Conveniently located just off of Stuart Highway, the DoubleTree by Hilton Alice Springs is only 15
minutes' drive from Alice Springs Airport and within walking distance of downtown. Enjoy easy
access to many businesses, government offices and attractions such as Simpsons Gap, Desert
Park and Anzac Hill.

The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert is a 1994 Australian comedy-drama film written and directed by Stephan Elliott. The plot follows the journey of two drag queens and a transsexual woman, played by Hugo Weaving, Guy Pearce, and Terence Stamp, across the Australian Outback from Sydney to Alice Springs in a tour bus that they have named "Priscilla", along the way encountering various groups and individuals.

John calls the Hertz number for information about the GPS no luck, no answer, glad this wasn't an emergency. We decide to drive back to the airport and the clerk at another car rental sets the GPS to English. By now we don't need it!
We head into town to pick up some supplies so we are stocked for our drive tomorrow.

.We drive around town hoping for something interesting to do, nada.

Back to the hotel it is now around 4 PM.

We go to the lobby bar to have a beer and use their free wi-fi. There is limited beers available. The bartender is far from friendly.
As we sit and try to connect the bartender says don't bother it won't reach that far you need to be right in the lobby.
I bite the bullet and pay $25 to connect. Luckily John can use the code to connect as well. It also comes with limited data usage. uploading to the blog soon uses that up.

The hotel has an Asian restaurant and the bar for dining options. We head to the bar to be told they are fully booked unless you have a reservation. Thank you, desk clerk, for letting us know this at check in.

So we headed to the Asian restaurant and it was busy but tables available. Server said speak to the manager but he was so busy doing other stuff that John finally told server to tell manager to come speak to us, suddenly we had a table. We had a delightful server, from Korea.

I had duck belly and John had butter chicken with delicious rice.

Why did we come to Alice Springs, well, seemly, it was the only place we could pick up a 4X4. We are not sure why we couldn't have done that at Ayer's Rock.