Port Douglas, a coastal paradise

I want to thank all of you for your thoughtful and kind comments on the passing of my sister-in-law, Eve.  She was a great lover of dogs, so being Thanksgiving week, give extra treats to your doggies. She would like that.

And she would also encourage me to continue writing about our travels, being a travel writer herself.  I am no travel writer, but do like documenting this trip, which Eve called a 'trip of a lifetime'.  And she was right!  It's been pretty remarkable.

I think when I last left you, we had finished up in the Outback and we were headed to the Great Barrier Reef.  We chose Port Douglas in Queensland, in Australia's northern tropics, as our gateway out to the reef.

Port Douglas is an international holiday destination with its beautiful sandy beaches and happy, relaxed vibe of big city offerings all packed in a small village.  A bit north of Port Douglas, is the rainforest habitat of Daintree but I'll leave that for another time.

A couple of trivia facts about Port Douglas include a holiday visit from then President Clinton and Hillary in 1996 (anniversary dinner) and again in September 2011.  It was here where they were informed about 9/11.  The image below was posted in the lobby of a restaurant where we dined.  And no, we didn't choose it because they had been there!  Ha!

Also, Port Douglas was the location where Steve Irwin, a.k.a, "Crocodile Hunter", died filming a documentary at Batt Reef after a stingray barb went into his chest while he was snorkeling above the stingray.  Fortunately, The Professor and I saw no stingrays while snorkeling!!!

We had several great days here biking around and enjoying evening sunsets.  I'll share more of the rainforest and reef later, but here are some of our visual beach delights around this seaside town.  One of our favorite things we did was to take a bottle of wine and a couple of chairs and take in sunset each evening.  It was delightful!