If They'd had Steak, I Wouldn't have had this Necklace

 We left our great little hotel in Cairns this morning.  We really liked staying with them.  Billie, Irene and Neville were excellent at the reception desk, doing all the booking for us and giving us sound and friendly advice.

We had planned to eat at the hotel restaurant last night.  Mark was lured by the signs hung up advertising $10 steak.  But, by the time we were ready to eat, the steak was sold out, so we decided to return to the Esplanade one more time for dinner.  It ended up being a good thing. Mark and John Roy found steak, Alan found a burger and I found a salad...and then after dinner, I also found this stone!

 

I do realize that "found" was only one of the verbs necessary for me to be wearing this new necklace today.  The stone is Australian, though from Tasmania, a part of the country that we are not visiting. It is green and purple and a little black.  The green comes from serpentine, the purple is called stichtite.  I haven't ever seen a stone with these crazy colors before.

We flew to Melbourne on the discount carrier JetStar and had a pretty uncomfortable flight with loads of crying, screaming children and crowded conditions.  This drove Alan, in particular, crazy.  We are in the big city now, and need to acculturate.   Melbourne is colder--maybe only in the 50's at best.  It is damp and gray and busy.  So is was like leaving Key West on a fine, low humid day, and landing in New York City in March. 

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Mark has registered for the conference (IBC, stands for International Botanical Congress) and  is getting excited.  One of the reasons that the flight was uncomfortable for him was that wasn't able to locate his talk on his flash drive.  He had two CD's burned with it, and JR and I were each carrying one.  Until we got here, though, he wasn't able to look at the CD's to be reassure himself that the talk was on them.  All is well now, and he will be able to rehearse tomorrow before his big afternoon on Tuesday.

We had pizza and salad for dinner in a casino complex a block or so from our hotel.  We also did a little grocery shopping since we have an efficiency.  It is fun to look for foods in another country.  More options for unflavored yogurt than in the States!  And the lactose-free milk came in a shelf stable package, but not  in the dairy section.  Pink Lady apples are grown here--and their season would be finished back at home. The boys chose Weetabix for cereal--who knew it came in different flavors?