CAIT AROUND THE WORLD

April 25, 2023 — Anzac Day. Most things were closed, so this was a pretty uneventful day for me. That said, I was up around 9:00am and took some time to organize my stuff — I’d done laundry the night before and it needed to get folded instead of laying on top of my bag — and got ready to head out to a coffee shop that I’d seen the day before and which was open until 1:00pm that day.

I ordered a short caramel macchiato (and was very happy to know what that is so that I can never order one again) and a cinnamon bun. The cinnamon bun, sadly, was somewhat disappointing, but I enjoyed a vanilla latte after all of this and that made up for it a bit. I sat and sipped coffee, people-watched, and worked on the blog until the shop closed at one.

I headed back to the hostel after that and continued doing some more blog work throughout the day. I also did some organizing for Indonesia and booked an Uber to the airport because the shuttle I’d inquired about the day before had emailed me back saying that they didn’t have availability. (I didn’t see until much later that they emailed me back a bit later to say that they read the date wrong and that they would, in fact, pick me up in the morning. But that’s a story for tomorrow.)

I spent some time scrolling on TikTok and watching Disney+ (little did I know, it would be the last time for three weeks). Eventually, I needed to eat and I decided to go out for dinner on my last night in Australia. It hit me yesterday that I only had two more days and I can’t tell you how much it hit me today that this was it. Three months of travel in one country, from one extreme to the other, south to north, was coming to an end. It felt a bit like the end of an era.

I didn’t have a place in mind but I decided to walk down by PJ O’Brien’s Irish Pub since I’d passed it so many times but had never gone in. I noticed that their special for the night was wings and a pint of Power’s, and my heart sang. I’d been craving wings for a little while and just hadn’t found any that sounded good. I went inside and ordered the wings with barbecue sauce and had my pint poured. The gentleman who took my order was Irish and, my God, the accent. I cannot wait to be surrounded by it for a solid two weeks. Power’s is brewed in Queensland and I was happy to finally try it, but I’ll tell you right now that it doesn’t have a whole lot of flavour. Refreshing as cold water on a hot summer day, just with a little bit more kick.

Given that I was in an Irish pub, I felt obliged to have a Guinness after the Power’s (but also because Power’s was basically water). I was feeling very nostalgic, looking back on three months in the land down under, and also looking ahead to Ireland (which was about forty days away at that point). I called home and chatted with mom and dad while I continued to soak up the atmosphere and eventually, somewhat unwillingly, headed back to the hostel for one more night’s sleep.

I finished prepping my bag and laying everything out since I had to leave at four thirty in the morning and while I did, I had a lovely chat with one of the girls in my dorm who was also from Canada and who had just arrived from Southeast Asia. She was full of tips and was such a nice person.

Later, I showered and crawled into bed, finally dropping off around midnight with my alarm set for four hours later.

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